Magic Online
by Mrs.InsaneOne
Summary: It has always been said that magic and technology did not mix; too bad no one ever mentioned that little fact to young Harry Potter. Add in one mad genius bent on destroying the lives of ten thousand people by trapping them inside of his online virtual reality game and you have the makings of a very dangerous brew. HP/HG
1. Theft

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN1:** _The timelines of both SAO and HP have been adjusted in order to align the storyline the way I wanted it to go. HP's timeline has been bumped forward three decades (meaning that Harry was born in the year 2010, orphaned in 2011, and due to go to Hogwarts in 2021) and SAO's timeline has been moved back three years (Kirito born in 2005 and the players trapped in SAO in 2019). Characters and players within the game will speak Japanese (except when Harry initiates a conversation in English with a player) and __**all**__ Japanese dialogue will be written in italics in order to distinguish it from Harry's spoken English – regardless of whose point of view is being used. _

_Additionally, I have placed Dudley's age as three years older than Harry; this is to make it more reasonable for Dudley to have gotten a NERDLES implanted at the start of the story since he would have only been a year younger than the cut off (those under thirteen being banned from having NERDLES implanted according to the SAO world rules. And while Vernon could probably spend any amount he wanted to get Dudley one early, I can't see a nine year old as being over looked while a very fat twelve year old might. This also gave the Dursleys more time as a family together before Harry was thrust into their life and therefore more reason for them (Dudley in particular) to resent Harry's presence._

**AN2:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

**Magic Online  
**Chapter One: Theft

_Thursday, August 15, 2019 7:45 PM_

Nine year old Harry Potter watched with undisguised shock while his heavyset twelve year old cousin, Dudley Dursley, pitched a fit as his grossly overweight uncle, Vernon Dursley, stormed in and out of the house several times hauling a small fortune's worth of brand spanking new computer and gaming equipment. Little Harry was stunned speechless that his uncle was throwing away the computer, the gaming console, the state of the art Nerve Gear, and all of the brand new (and rather expensive) games he'd purchased for his son over the past couple of months. He just couldn't believe that his uncle would take something away from his [Harry's] cousin after he [Uncle Vernon] had spent so much money on the gaming system in the first place _and_ when it was patently obvious that Dudley still wanted said computer equipment.

It was unreal because Uncle Vernon _never_ denied Dudley anything. If one was to look up the definition for the phrase 'spoiled rotten' in the dictionary one would find a picture of Dudley Dursley; that was how much the boy had been spoiled. Late night snacks, late night movies, expensive toys, all day trips to amusement parks, brand new clothes, all the latest techno-gadgets; it didn't matter what it cost or how unreasonable the desire. If Dudley wanted it, then he got it; pure and simple.

What could possibly drive an overindulgent father into taking away a prized possession from his beloved son? To answer that question, one would first need to know a little history about the Dursley Family.

The Dursley family is comprised of four individuals; Vernon Dursley, his wife Petunia Dursley (née Evans), his son Dudley Dursley, and his older sister Marge Dursley. Mr. Dursley is an ordinary man with an ordinary job who loves his ordinary wife and wonderfully ordinary son. Mrs. Dursley is the perfect housewife who thinks she landed the perfect husband, knew she'd given birth to the world's most perfect boy, and she is perfectly content to spy upon her less than perfect neighbors in order to spread perfectly scandalous gossip about town. Dudley is just Dudley and he cares for nothing and thinks of no one but himself. And Miss Dursley swears her brother's family is the best family one could have and takes pleasure in gloating over how fine a boy her nephew is turning out to be.

Over all, they were a perfectly normal sort of family that was perfectly satisfied with their perfectly normal life.

Unfortunately, for the Dursleys, their perfectly normal life took a sharp turn towards the abnormal when Mrs. Dursley unexpectedly found her one and a half year old nephew, one Harry James Potter, sitting on their porch in a basket one brisk autumn morning. With the arrival of their nephew, the Dursley's normal lifestyle took a steep nosedive towards the abnormal. For starters, normal families did not have newly orphaned relatives dropped on their doorsteps without so much as a by-your-leave with nothing but a letter telling them an estranged family member had been murdered during the night. Normal families also did not attempt to hide all evidence that said child existed.

Worse yet, in the eyes of the now no longer normal Dursley family, was the fact that the unwanted child that had been dumped upon their doorstep had been born with a rare ability. He'd been born with the ability to use magic. A freak in the eyes of the family upon whose doorstep he'd been left. An unwanted burden. A terrible secret that would ruin their 'normal' lives completely should anyone learn that he was related to them.

Now, some may jump to the conclusion that the Dursleys would physically abuse the abnormal and unwanted child that they had been saddled with but the truth was that they went out of their way to avoid touching little Harry. They feared that they might contract some horrible disease if they were constantly coming into physical contact with the boy and so left him alone. That didn't stop them from tormenting him verbally, mentally, and emotionally or from threatening him with all kinds of terrible punishments any and every time something went wrong (including more than one death threat).

They also tended to blame him for everything that went wrong; even if there was no possible way for him to have been involved.

Despite their harsh and borderline unethical treatment of the child, he was at least taken care of, after a fashion. They fed him; even if the food he was given consisted of substandard fare that fell well short of a healthy diet (this was not all that surprising though, since the Dursley's diet was hardly what you'd call healthy). They clothed him; even if the clothes he was given were nothing but the worn out cast offs their precious son no longer wore. They sheltered him; if one could consider a small storage cupboard beneath the stairs adequate shelter. And they saw to it that he was properly educated; if only because sending him to school allowed them to kick the unnatural child out of the house for long hours at a time.

As far as the Dursleys were concerned, those bare necessities were more than adequate enough to cover their nephew's basic needs. In return for those bare necessities, Harry was required to do a rather unrealistic number of chores in order to 'repay' his relatives for their so called kindnesses and generosity.

He also had a very strict set of rules that he was to follow.

Never speak unless spoken to. Never answer the phone. Never answer the door. Never ask questions. Never show any emotions. Never touch any of Dudley's precious things. Never take anything that belonged to the Dursleys. Never let anyone see his face outside of the house (school days the only exception and even then he had to sneak out least one of the neighbors caught sight of him leaving the house). And above all else, never, ever speak of anything unnatural (like magic). So long as the rules were obeyed and his chores were completed on time, the Dursleys ignored Harry (provided there was no funny business going on that could be blamed on him).

All in all, it made for a sad and lonely existence for one Harry Potter. He didn't complain, even though he had no idea what it was he'd done to make his relatives hate him so much (completely unaware of his magical heritage), because any complaints he might have voiced would have gotten him in trouble. He couldn't remember a time when his life hadn't been the way it was now.

That didn't mean he was happy with his lot in life.

In fact, he hated living with the Dursleys (even if he didn't actively hate his relatives – he just didn't like them all that much). He couldn't bring himself to consider the Dursley's house home; not since he was old enough to realize just how unfair and unnatural it was for his relatives to treat him the way they did. And each night as he curled up beneath the stairs, he dreamed of a place he could call home.

His wish would be granted just a few weeks after his ninth birthday, on the night his entire world was shaken at the very foundations, when he watched the door slam shut behind Uncle Vernon as the man carried the last of Dudley's beloved gaming equipment out to the rubbish bins lined up beside the garage. You see, Dudley had made the mistake of bragging about the _magical_ sword skills he'd learned in one of his games during the evening meal. The moment the word 'magic' had passed through Dudley's lips; Aunt Petunia had gone white as a sheet and nearly fainted in fear while Uncle Vernon had gone purple in rage.

The next thing Harry knew, Uncle Vernon had lugged the gaming equipment out to the rubbish bins as he muttered darkly under his breath while Dudley wailed like a siren in the background. Ducking back into his tiny bedroom (least his uncle find reason to blame the entire incident on him), Harry bit his lip as he listened to Dudley's ongoing tantrum; his mind going a mile a minute as he considered doing something that could easily see him kicked out of the house (or killed if he angered his uncle enough and the man actually followed through on his threats for once).

Harry was going to break a rule.

He was going to steal from the Dursleys; he was going to smuggle the binned gaming equipment back into the house and he was going to keep it for himself.

Worse, his theft was going to involve the ultimate taboo in the Dursley's world; his planned theft was something that contained mentions of _magic_.

Some people would question Harry's sanity for risking his entire existence for something that had clearly angered his uncle but Harry was curious. He wanted, no, _needed_ to know what was so terrible about a single game (and the one word that apparently not even his cousin was allowed to utter) that would drive his overbearing and overindulgent uncle into throwing away such costly equipment while at the same time depriving his son of a favorite possession and, as the saying goes; in for a penny, in for a pound.

With that one decision, Harry changed the path his life had been set upon and the consequences would have far reaching effects.

Later that evening, after his relatives had gone to bed, Harry snuck out to the rubbish bins to carefully retrieve each and every last piece of gaming equipment that had been tossed out while his relatives slept on; all three of them blissfully unaware of his current misbehavior. It took him over an hour and close to eight trips back and forth between his closet and the rubbish bins to transport everything to his bedroom. He spent another two hours carefully setting everything up in the smallest corner of his cupboard (using the instructions, which had been thrown out as well), where the ceiling dropped down close to the floor due to the stairs.

He would run the cords against the wall behind his mattress to hide them from view before he plugged them into the unprotected socket on the opposite end of his cupboard. Two more trips outside would then net him a pair of cardboard boxes that one of the neighbors had thrown out, an old blanket his aunt was going to cut into dust rags, a pair of scissors, and a dusty roll of duct tape from the utility shed in the Dursley's back yard. Making as little noise as he possibly could, Harry cut up the cardboard boxes to make an accordion style door to hide everything behind; using the duct tape for hinges and to secure the door to the underside of the stairs.

Once finished, the door could be folded up vertically and secured to the ceiling of the room by a carefully folded loop of tape secured between two bent nails that stuck out from the step the makeshift door had been hung from. The leftover cardboard was then neatly tucked beneath his worn out mattress in order to make his bed a little bit more comfortable and the cords beneath it a little less noticeable.

Next, he cut the blanket into thirds; one third of which he cut up further to make the rags his aunt intended to turn the blanket into. Another third of the blanket was carefully spread out over his bed so that he wouldn't have to ask for new covers from his aunt; something that he would have gotten in trouble for doing. The final third was carefully hung over the inside of his cupboard door with duct tape in such a way that it would block the seams of the door and prevent any light from escaping out of his closet. The blanket could easily be hidden by rolling it up and securing it in place above the door with a small strip of cloth and the nails that poked out of the wall.

After hanging up the blanket over his door, Harry left his closet one last time to return the scissors and tape from where he'd gotten them from so they wouldn't be missed and to put the newly made rags away where they belonged so that his aunt wouldn't go searching for the missing blanket. On his way back to his room, he grabbed several alcohol wipes from the first aide kit so he could clean the equipment before he used it. When he returned to his room, he dropped the blanket down into place over his door and began taking care of his purloined gaming system.

Once he'd cleaned everything, paying close attention to the Nerve Gear out of necessity, Harry placed the spare Nerve Direct Linkage Environment System (NERDLES) that Uncle Vernon had purchased (in case the one that had been implanted in Dudley malfunctioned at some point) on the back of his neck where it met the base of his skull (as shown in the diagram of the package) completely unaware that the device was supposed to be surgically implanted. He winced as he felt the needles of the device pierce his skin but soon forgot about the pain as he slipped on the helmet unit of the Nerve Gear and powered on the device.

The device ran through a complete diagnosis of his current physical, mental, and emotional state before he launched the basic tutorial on how to use the equipment when the option was provided. Next he ran through a step that the system called calibration; the system requesting that he physically touch various parts of his body in order to allow the gear to learn how much he had to move his hands to reach each part; which would allow the system to accurately and smoothly portray the sensation of movement while he was within the games.

During this period, he never noticed his magic integrating the NERDLES device completely into his body and enhancing the effectiveness of the technology at the same time instead of shorting it out like it should have the moment his magic had come in contact with the active technology – not surprising since the device hadn't actually been properly activated by a surgical technician upon proper implantation.

It only took about twenty minutes for Harry to learn the basics before he was testing the system using one of the many educational games that the Dursleys had purchased in the hopes that Dudley would learn from them. He quickly grew bored with that simple game though and sat up to hunt through the pile of games to find the game that Dudley had been bragging about during the meal. It didn't take him long to find the disc and just seconds later he inserted the beta release of Ken no Sekai (a game for which Uncle Vernon had shelled out nearly two thousand quid in order to purchase a copy from a Japanese client through work because Dudley had demanded a copy of the game) into the console.

He wasted no time in activating the link once the Nerve Gear informed him that the software had been loaded. Over the course of the next hour, Harry slowly muddled his way through the game's tutorial to build himself a cool looking avatar that looked like an older and taller version of himself using the step by step instructions that had been provided by the man that his uncle had purchased the software from (due to an English version of the game being unavailable).

Next he was required to fill out a short questionnaire that would determine what Skills he could learn during the course of his game play and what his chosen profession would be (once again relying on the provided instructions). Lastly, he selected his middle name as his penname (to keep anyone from recognizing him), leaving the rest of his profile blank for the same reason why he'd not used his first or last name.

The game then activated and he appeared in a cathedral like room that was called the Fukkatsu no Heya. Harry would eventually learn that this was the room in which a player's character would respawn if they 'died' during the game after he'd began teaching himself to read and write Japanese at the local library in order to play the game more effectively. Harry spent several minutes checking out the magnificent room before he dashed across the open floor and hurried out through the only door.

A grin bloomed across Harry's face and his eyes lit up with wonder as he stared out at the rambling streets of what looked like a medieval city that he would soon discover was called Hajimari no Machi. It looked nothing like the cookie-cutter rows of houses that filled the street his aunt and uncle lived on and that alone made it remarkable.

It was love at first sight.

* * *

_Saturday, November 02, 2019 9:15 AM_

Harry focused intently on washing the breakfast pans while he kept one ear open for the sound of the post being pushed through the mail slot. It had been over a month since the beta test of Sword Art Online (SAO) had ended and the official version of the game was due to go live in four days. Uncle Vernon had pre-ordered the full version of the game (through the online link located within the beta version) shortly after he purchased the beta software and several days before he'd trashed the entire system because Dudley had used the word 'magic' even though there were actually no Magical Skills offered in the game (Harry had looked because he wanted to see what the forbidden magic looked like).

The software should have been shipped out on the twenty-eighth of October (the shipping date announced in-game on the last day of the beta test) and Harry had been diligently checking the mail every morning since the thirtieth in the hopes of stealing it before Vernon or Dudley saw it; both of the Dursley males had long since forgotten about the game and he didn't want to remind them. So long as he could chuck the software into his cupboard without anyone noticing, no one would ever know that he'd been the one to take the gaming equipment out of the rubbish bin nearly three months earlier.

Oh how both Dudley and Vernon had moaned and complained about that; Dudley because he'd planned to sneak it back into the house himself once his father had gone to work and Vernon because he'd been hoping to take it to the pawn shop in order to get back part of what he'd spent to purchase everything.

Harry was eager to return to the life he'd created for himself inside of the virtual reality game; a life that was nothing at all like his real life. In the game, he was Tracker James; a reclusive scavenger hunter that located rare items, plants, and creatures that he could sell or trade for goods, services, or money. He was pants at sword work (he had killed himself far too many times each time he tried to use a sword) and had instead learned how to make various types of traps to capture and kill the different monsters and creatures that he hunted. He'd quickly learned which of the game's Equipped Skills would help him survive on his own in the dungeons and had honed them during the month and a half he'd had to play the beta version.

Those Skills included:

Searching: the ability to spot players, monsters, creatures, and rare items.  
Tracking: the ability to follow any player, monster, or creature.  
Listening: the ability to hear the smallest of sounds.  
Night Vision: the ability to see in the dark.  
Detection: the ability to detect hidden monsters or players and avoid ambushes.  
Hiding: the ability to avoid notice from players, monsters, and creatures that use visual tracking.  
Sprint: the ability to use extreme speed over a short distance (useful for dodging an attack or attacking when least expected).  
Fishing: allows a player to catch water-bound creatures and monsters.  
Acrobatics: an ability that can be used to dodge attacks, to perform aerial attacks, or to entertain other players.  
And Trapping: the ability to set a variety of traps in order to kill or capture any monster and creature; though it was far less effective on boss level monsters.

He had also learned a handful of Unarmed Skills that he'd found highly useful in getting through the game. Those Skills were:

Escape: the ability to flee from a battle with an opponent that is too powerful (the only exception being Boss Monsters).  
Camping: allows a player to use their equipped skills to make a safe camp in which they could rest while within a dungeon.  
Navigation: the ability to create dungeon maps in order to better navigate a dungeon.  
Scouting: the ability to locate safe zones within a dungeon – this skill was linked to the equipped skills of Tracking, Searching, and Detection.  
And Research: the ability to separate fact from rumor and dig up hard to find information – this skill was linked to the equipped skill Listening.

Outside of the game, Harry spent what time he could at the local public library looking up the meanings of the various Japanese symbols that he painstakingly copied from the game introduction and the Player Menu so he could memorize what they meant in order to navigate the game easier. He also looked up common phrases in Japanese so he could speak to and understand the other players when needed (his self-study sessions had continued even after the beta test was shut down).

At first glance, his character appeared to be weak but because he'd built up all of his Skills (both the Equipped and the Unarmed Skills) to a minimum of six hundred Points or higher, he was actually quite strong. He also tended to fight using his head rather than his muscles (figuratively speaking) since the only equipment he carried with him was a small dagger, a shovel, and the ropes, wires, and cables that he used for his snare traps. During the course of the game, Harry had learned quite a bit about himself as well. He found that he enjoyed the quiet solitude of the forest, disliked large crowds, hated small dark spaces, and that he loved the challenge of hunting the harder to kill game monsters.

More importantly though, was that in the six weeks he'd been playing the game, the world of Aincrad had become home to the nine year old.

Harry was pulled out of his introspection by the sound of the mail flap squeaking open and it took all of his willpower to keep the grin off his face as he heard the sound of a heavier than normal package hitting the floor. He just knew that the software he'd been waiting for had finally arrived. The Dursleys were far too engrossed in watching the television set in the dining room and eating the large meal Harry had cooked for them to pay attention to the world around them and Harry quickly dried his hands before dashing to the front door on silent feet. It took but a couple of seconds for him to collect everything from the floor and his hands fairly shook when he saw the Argus Company logo combined with the SAO logo on the thick, plastic wrapped cardboard packet that had been shoved through the slot.

Hardly daring to breathe, his heart pounding like crazy, Harry hurried to his cupboard under the stairs and shoved the package beneath his mattress before he hurried to the dining room to place the rest of the mail on the table beside his uncle. He then scampered back into the kitchen to finish washing the pots and pans so he could start on the rest of his chores; the sooner he got them finished, the sooner he could open the game to check it out. Even knowing he'd have to wait at least another four days before he could play the game didn't dampen his mood as he scrubbed diligently at the caked on bits of overcooked egg that was stuck to the skillet he was washing.

Keeping his excitement bottled up inside was nearly impossible but it was something he had to force himself to do least the Dursleys get suspicious of his behavior and searched his cupboard. Still, every so often he could help the huge grin that would spread across his face for a few seconds before he could wipe it from his face.

Only four more days until he could go _home_.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Fukkatsu no Heya – Room of Resurrection  
Hajimari no Machi – Starting City or Town of Beginnings  
Ken no Sekai – Sword Art Online

**Game Terminology:**

Nerve Gear – equipment created by Kayaba Akihiko (Argus); allows the user to enter FullDive  
FullDive – the use of technology to fully immerse one's conscience in a virtual reality  
NERDLES – **Ner**ve **D**irect **L**inkage **E**nvironment **S**ystem (a surgically implanted chip that allows the FullDive system to interface with the brain – the surgically implanted part may or may not be canon as it was something I thought seemed more logical than it just being part of the interface helmet)  
Respawn – a reset of the player's character after the character has 'died' within the game  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

* * *

Harry's Game Data/Stats (End of Beta Test):

**Classification:** Human Player  
**Level:** 23  
**HP:** 4200/4200  
**Col:** 13,345

**Main Equipment:**

Steel Shovel – Sturdy shovel used for digging traps  
Steel Cable – Extra thick wire that is difficult to break/cut and used to create traps  
Hardy Boots – Sturdy boots that make some noise and raise his defense slightly  
Leather Gloves – Sturdy gloves that protect his hands from his trap wires and cables and raise his defense slightly  
Leather Clothes – Sturdy clothes that raise his defense slightly

**Skill Slots:** 10  
**Equipped Skills:** (Basic 1-250 pts, Advanced 251-500 pts, Proficient 501-750 pts, Expert 751-999 pts, &amp; Master 1000 pts)

Acrobatics – 602  
Detection – 712  
Fishing – 653  
Hiding – 726  
Listening – 756  
Night Vision – 635  
Searching – 749  
Sprint – 798  
Tracking – 695  
Trapping – 763

**Unarmed Skills:** 5

Escape – 748  
Camping – 671  
Navigation – 604  
Scouting – 618  
Research – 642

**Notes:** To calculate the HP for any given level I used the following formula: [175(L – 1) + 350] where L = player's level and 350 represents a player's HP at level one. So, using Harry's beta level as an example; [175(23-1) + 350 = 4200]

* * *

**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	2. Entrapment

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Two: Entrapment

_Thursday, November 06, 2019 4:52 AM_

Harry was vibrating with suppressed excitement.

He'd been awake for nearly two hours counting down the minutes until the live version of SAO went online. He'd had his system set up for a half an hour now and was just waiting for five o'clock to arrive so that he could turn his purloined Nerve Gear on, start the game software, and Dive back into the world he saw as his true home. Less than eight minutes remained until the designated launch time and Harry had to suppress a squeal of excitement least he wake the Dursleys. The only regret he had was that the opening day had fallen on a school day; which meant that he'd only have an hour and a half of uninterrupted play before his aunt would expect him to be up to make breakfast for the family.

Still, ninety minutes of blissful time spent in Aincrad would be ninety minutes of time well spent as far as Harry was concerned.

Only five minutes left now. Harry felt his cheeks start to ache due to the wide grin he was sporting as he clicked on the desktop shortcut to the game in order to let the software start loading as his entire being filled with anticipation. He briefly wondered if he'd run into any of the other beta testers he'd played alongside during the six weeks he'd spent exploring the beta version of the game during the short time he has that morning to play before he shrugged and promptly turned his thoughts back to the actual game. It really didn't matter if he ran into any of them or not.

It wasn't like he'd made friends with any of the other testers.

That brief bit of internal speculation had taken up another two minutes of time and Harry was pleased to see that there were less than three minutes remaining before he could go home. He activated the Nerve Gear and checked to make certain everything else was set (testing the cables and connectors for loose connections) before he put the helmet on and twisted around to lay down on his mattress; taking the time to get himself comfortable. Taking a deep breath, he watched the clock on virtual display of the helmet's screen slowly count down the final seconds before he whispered, "Link start."

An explosion of colors rushed before his eyes and then the Never Gear was syncing the new game software to his brain; testing each of his five senses and confirming his calibration settings. In less than two minutes, he was logging into the game and choosing to use his beta test character rather than starting over from scratch with a new character. The welcome screen flashed at him for a split second before an array of blue filled his vision as he was transported into the game where he soon found himself standing in the middle of a large stone courtyard in Hajimari no Machi instead of in the Fukkatsu no Heya as expected wearing his character's default outfit of brown pants, a brown and tan long sleeve shirt, leather boots, and a leather chest plate.

Harry didn't care about he slight deviation from his normal game-play routine though; he was just happy to be home.

Dozens of people began appearing on all sides in flashes of blue light and Harry quickly slipped out of the courtyard in order to avoid getting trampled on by the any of the other nine thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine players that had purchased the game. He was leisurely walking through one of the many market places that littered the city when he was nearly run over by a familiar black haired man wearing brown pants, long sleeved dark blue shirt, and leather armor that he briefly recalled seeing once or twice during the beta test.

He'd never actually been introduced to the other guy though and felt not need to chase after him; especially after he had noticed another man with long pinkish red hair wearing dark brown pants, a white shirt, and leather armor chasing after him. Harry didn't need any trouble when he'd only just arrived and had so little time to reacquaint himself with the world that had become his home.

Heading to one of the less crowded market plazas, Harry found an out of the way bench where he wouldn't be bothered and took a few minutes to scan through the Menu and check out his Stats. He was a little sad to find that his character had been reset to level one (from level twenty-three) and that his Skill Points dropped down to one third of what they'd been at the end of the testing period but he didn't stay down for long. He was at least thankful that he'd kept his final skill set since it would have been a real pain to have to unlock each of them again; completely unaware that his acquired Skills should have been completely erased and the number of open Skill slots available limited to six until he unlocked more through the game.

He was also happy to discover that he still had his basic equipment in his Inventory; though he pouted over the loss of his steel shovel, steel cable, and steel fishing rod that he'd acquired towards the end of the testing period. Still, it could have been worse; he might have had to spend what little money he'd been allocated as a starting fund just to buy his basic tools. Instead, he could splurge a bit and purchase a couple of potions and a transport crystal to carry with him in case he lost track of time while out in the dungeons (where log out functions were sometimes limited) and didn't have time to walk back to a safe zone to log out.

Pulling up the city map, he scanned the listing of shops in the area to find the nearest one that sold potions and crystals. Once he found what he was looking for, he sprinted there in the hopes of beating the other players that intended to stock up using what money they had; Harry wrongly thinking that everyone started with the same amount of money as he had (unknown to Harry, a small fraction of what he had collected by the end of the beta test had been transferred over and added to the starting fund all players were given) and that the other beta testers also had their original basic equipment to use. He was in luck; the non-player character (NPC) running the store had no other customers and still had a full inventory of merchandise.

While Harry was shelling out several thousand Col (the currency used in SAO) within the game; his magic was reacting to Harry's immersion into the virtual reality environment (much as it had that first night he'd used the system). This time it drew upon the complex blood wards that had been set around the Dursley's home (for both his protection and theirs) and twisted them in response to Harry's mental proclamation that the fictional world he'd just entered was his one true home (the beta version had only been a temporary preview and therefore had not truly been seen as home; not like the full version was in Harry's mind).

It started by encasing his entire body in a protective shield that would prevent anyone from touching him and, more importantly, the shield would prevent anyone from removing the Nerve Gear from his head. Next, his magic expanded outwards while the blood wards tied to the house sent tendrils of magic inwards to lock his cupboard from both the inside and the outside; effectively sealing Harry into his closet and sealing the door shut. As the magic moved through the house, it acted upon the deepest wishes of both Harry and the Dursleys (specifically, his aunt); to be free of each other.

To that end, the magic removed all traces of Harry from the Dursleys' lives.

It even went so far as to completely remove any memories they had of Harry from the seven and a half years that he'd lived under their roof. When it finished, there was no evidence anywhere in the house or in the minds of its occupants that Harry had ever existed (bar a box of forgotten belongings tucked away in the attic); even his cupboard door had disappeared despite the fact that his cupboard remained beneath the stairs. The protective magics would remain active just long enough to wipe the mind of a batty old cat lady that sometimes watched Harry for the Dursleys (when she walked passed the house looking for the child two days later) before going dormant until the next time they were needed.

In the game, Harry (completely unaware of the changes taking place in the real world) placed his new purchases in his Inventory, thanked the NPC Clerk, and exited the store. It was time for him to find out just how much of his previous Skills remained. He took a moment to set the alarm built into the Player Menu to go off at six fifteen (which was two-fifteen in the game since the game clock was set to Tokyo Time) so he wouldn't be late starting breakfast. He then checked his map of the city again, in order to gain his bearings, before he headed towards the nearest exit so that he could enter the first floor dungeon where he could scare up a couple of monsters to test his trapping abilities on.

Stepping out onto the grasslands that surrounded Hajimari no Machi, Harry let a wide grin stretch across his face as his green eyes lit up in delight over the familiar and much loved sight of rolling hills and endless fields that filled his vision.

Letting out a whoop of excitement, Harry sprinted towards one of the less popular fields in order to get a little privacy and plenty of space to prevent random players from falling victim to his traps. Harry quickly discovered that he could only sprint for a total of twenty-five yards at a time; meaning that he'd flash ahead in short bursts that left a streak of blurred color behind to mark his trajectory and then need to stop for five seconds to reset the move before he could do it again. It was just barely fifteen yards beyond the default distance, whereas during the beta test he'd managed to extend that distance up to one hundred yards and could smoothly transition into a new sprint with a single step that made his movements appear smooth and almost continuous.

Each successful sprint would add Experience Points to the Sprint Skill and bring him one step closer to regaining his former level of mastery in that Skill. He couldn't help but laugh out loud with each step as he felt the simulated wind rush passed his face. After a couple hundred yards, he flashed passed the two men he'd seen running through the town earlier but didn't bother to stop and say hello since it appeared they were busy facing a small group of Frenzy Boars. His loud laughter and blurred dash had drawn the attention of both men but he was long gone before they could fully register his presence.

Twenty minutes after leaving the town, Harry found a secluded corner of the field that was the perfect place to set up a couple of traps in order to determine his current mastery of the Trapping Skill. After a brief debate and a check of the time, Harry decided to test his snare building abilities first since digging a pit would be time consuming until his mastery Points reached the four hundred mark. He was a bit rusty on tying the knots needed to form the snare but after practicing for about fifteen minutes, he retrained his avatar to make the appropriate movements and prompt the game to recognize the Trap. As an added bonus, he gained sixty Experience Points towards remastering that Skill as he set a total of six working snares in the immediate area.

Now he just had to lure a monster or two into the trapped section of the field and find out just how effective the snares would be. Not wanting to get killed early on in the game (since it would waste his limited time in the game by forcing him to cross the fields a second time), Harry decided that he wasn't going to draw a stampede of Frenzy Boars like he normally would have. Instead, he targeted a single Boar and coaxed it into charging at him as he slowly lured it towards his trap field. He whooped and hollered as he egged the monster on; excitement flowing through him as he lost all sense of time and reality for a moment.

The Frenzy Boar had just activated one of the snare traps when Harry's alarm went off, reminding him that he had chores waiting for him back in the real world, and he let out a groan.

He did not want to return to his wretched life with the Dursleys.

Grumbling under his breath about slave drivers and whiney whales disguised as pigs in suits, Harry shut off his alarm before he checked his snare trap and grinned to himself when he saw the struggling boar securely trapped. Pulling out his dagger, Harry carefully moved up behind the boar and stabbed it in the vulnerable spot at the back of the neck for the kill the moment he had a clear shot and the boar shattered in death. A small window immediately popped up with a summary of the Experience Points, a list of Items, and the small amount of Col he'd earned from the successful kill. After taking a moment to scan through the list, Harry closed out the window.

The nine year old then sighed and opened his Player Menu in order to log out so that he could start breakfast.

Harry frowned as he ran his finger down the available options and found the log out option missing. Knowing that his grasp of kanji wasn't all that good (though it was far better than it had been when he first joined the game during the beta test – thanks to the additional Japanese lessons he'd taken after the beta test had ended), Harry back tracked into the utility tools and toggled the written characters from kanji to romaji since the Romanized letters were much easier for him to muddle through. Once that was done, he quickly returned to the Player options and tried to log out a second time; only when the last Menu opened he found that the log out option was still not there.

A brief check of the time showed that he still had ten minutes before his aunt would be downstairs to wake him up in order to start breakfast and he quickly attempted to call a Game Moderator (GM) in order to report the bug. When he was unable to connect to a GM, Harry tried to quell the growing panic he was feeling. He knew that there was bound to be glitches in the newly released game and knew that the bug would be taken care of as soon as they isolated the problem and applied the fix. The problem was that he only had three more minutes until his aunt would be expecting him to wake up in order to make breakfast.

If he didn't get up first, she would open the door to check on him and the moment she saw him wearing the Nerve Gear; she'd screech for his uncle who would then learn that he'd been the one to steal Dudley's gaming equipment out of the trash (the child completely unaware that his magic had taken measures to protect him from just such a situation).

Terror gripped the nine year old and he began hyperventilating as the mere thought of being discovered as a thief sent his imagination into overtime as his mind replayed all of the threats that his uncle had given to him through the years. If he didn't log out right this minute, he was as good as dead and he'd never again have the opportunity to return to the world that had become his home. Simulated tears began slipping down his face as his personal clock registered six thirty-two and he still was unable to log out. Pressing his hands over his mouth, stared at the game Menu without seeing it as realization set in; his uncle was going to kill him.

Ten minutes later, when the log out option still hadn't been restored, Harry let out a scream of pure frustration mixed with sheer terror.

Numbness set in when seven o'clock (or three o'clock Tokyo/Game Time) rolled around and he was still trapped within the game. Confusion soon followed as it slowly dawned on him that no one had forcefully removed the Nerve Gear from his head in order to force him to return to reality despite the fact that another half an hour had passed. Fear soon returned as he began to suspect that the only reason the Dursleys hadn't forcefully pulled him from the game was because they were waiting to see how long it took him to exit on his own. And the longer he remained in game, the harsher his punishment was going to be.

_He was really going to die_.

The numbness returned when the clock displayed the time as eight-fifteen (or four-fifteen Tokyo/Game Time). He was now well over an hour and a half late and the log out option had still not been repaired. Overwhelmed by the knowledge that his life had been ruined by a glitch in the game, Harry blindly made his way back towards Hajimari no Machi. It took him well over an hour to cross the fields he'd sprinted through earlier; the disguised nine year old traveling at a snail's pace as his mind focused firmly on what he believed was his pending death. He was just passing the same pair of men he'd seen earlier when they discovered the bug that had ruined Harry's entire life and the red-headed man's yells pulled Harry out of his daze.

"_Return! Log out! Escape!_*"

Harry stopped and watched the man's antics for several minutes; most of his words (bar the first few) not making any sense to Harry because the man was speaking Japanese so fast that Harry couldn't understand him. The brunette on the other hand was trying to stay calm but Harry could see the man's eyes reflecting the concern that had gripped Harry when he'd first discovered the missing log out option. He had just shaken himself out of his stupor and prepared to continue walking when the brunette asked the redhead a question that immediately drew Harry's attention back to their conversation as he picked up more than a few familiar words.

"_Don't you think it's weird?*_"

"_Well sure. Since it's a bug,*_" the redhead replied calmly with a negligent shrug of the shoulders.

"It's not just a stupid bug," Harry yelled; the nine year old suddenly and unreasonably angry that the man could be so cavalier about the glitch that spelled the end of Harry's entire world. "A stupid bug would have been fixed **hours** ago!"

"Huh? What was that?" the redhead asked in confusion as he spun around to glance at Harry.

"What do you mean, 'hours ago'?" the brunette demanded with a frown at the same time; both men thankfully speaking English in response to Harry's use of the language (making it easier for the nine year old to understand their questions).

"I've been trying to log out for…" Harry started to reply only for the rest of his words to be cut off when the loud ringing of a bell cut through the entire field. Shortly after the ringing echoes faded, he was engulfed in the blue light of a forced teleportation and he half feared and half hoped that that meant that the glitch had been discovered by and the GMs were forcefully ejecting everyone out of the game so that the error could be fixed and the servers rebooted.

No such luck.

The moment the light cleared, Harry found himself back in Hajimari no Machi, standing in the middle of the large stone courtyard where he'd first appeared when he'd logged into the game four and a half hours earlier alongside hundreds of other players. On the opposite side of the courtyard from him, two more pillars of blue light deposited the two men he'd been talking to just a few minutes earlier at the same time as Harry checked his Player Menu to see if the log out function had been fixed; it hadn't.

As Harry closed his Menu again, thousands more pillars of blue light deposited other individuals in the area until Harry imagined that every single player in the game had been forcefully brought to the large area. When the last transport glow faded, the sky turned red as hundreds of flashing tags blocked out the sky as they declared that a system announcement was about to take place. Shortly after the last patch of blue sky vanished behind one of the tags, a figure poured out of the cracks between the flashing tags to tower over the gathered players. The moment it was fully formed it began speaking.

The next twenty minutes would irrevocably change the lives of every single player in the game.

Harry didn't understand most of what was being said by the intimidating, larger-than-life figure hovering in the sky above the plaza; he was not using any of the common phrases that Harry had learned and the muttering going on all around him made it harder to concentrate. He knew it must be bad though, because he could see a number of the players all around him starting to panic or grow angry and more than a few people started screaming what sounded like threats or curses at the figure in the sky.

His confusion over the current situation only grew when he noticed everyone around him suddenly open up their inventories and taking out identical mirrors in response to something the figure had said. He was just considering looking in his Inventory to see if he had one of the mirrors as well when white pillars of light began engulfing the other players. Uncertain about what was happening now, Harry watched as the flashes of white light transformed each player; some completely changing (a few young girls even turning into old men) while others just received minor changes to their avatars.

When no pillar of light encompassed him, Harry suspected that the light was somehow connected to the mirrors (because the players weren't engulfed in the strange light until they were touching the mirrors) and he closed out his Menu without even looking inside of his Inventory because it appeared that the change was painful given the higher number of people that were now yelling and panicking.

The apparition in the sky spoke one last time at that point before it melted back into the flashing background of the warning tags and the crowd began panicking once again.

Harry carefully made his way clear of the crowd that was growing rowdier by the second and hid behind a stack of crates in a nearby alley as he tried to figure out what had just happened. He was just contemplating whether or not he should ask another player about what had just happened when a brunette teen wearing an outfit similar to the brunette man he'd spoken to earlier dragged an older, scruffy looking man with spiky brown hair (who was wearing the same clothes as the redhead from earlier) into the alley.

The nine year old held his breath and canted his head to the side to activate his Listening Skill as the pair held a short conversation. Any hopes he had of getting a better understanding of the situation were dashed when the conversation just served to confuse Harry further since he only managed to understand one in three words spoken before the teen vanished and the man returned to the courtyard.

It would take Harry two days of eavesdropping in the various market places to learn that Kayaba Akihiko had trapped ten thousand people inside of the game and that the mirrors every one had taken out of their Inventory had stripped all of the players of their artificial avatars, forcing them to appear in the game much as they did in real life. It was another three days before he learned that an in game death equated to death in real life and that there were no second chances within the game; if you died, you were dead and nothing was going to bring you back.

By the end of the first week, Harry had learned that over four hundred people had supposedly died but most people weren't taking the deaths seriously because they still thought it was all some big joke. When the truth of their situation finally sank in alongside the realization that they were really well and truly trapped, many people gave into their despair.

Not Harry though.

Once Harry learned that he'd never have to leave Aincrad (at least not until someone cleared the final level), all of his worries and fears faded away.

He was home and no one could make him leave.

At first, he worried that his aunt and uncle would forcibly remove the Nerve Gear, killing him in the process, but soon realized they would have already done so if they'd been able to. That, or they'd already killed his body and his soul would live on indefinitely within the game until his avatar was killed.

Harry didn't care.

All that mattered now was that he was home and he was free.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Fukkatsu no Heya – Room of Resurrection  
Hajimari no Machi – Starting City or Town of Beginnings  
Ken no Sekai – Sword Art Online

**Game Terminology:**

Nerve Gear – equipment created by Kayaba Akihiko (Argus); allows the user to enter FullDive  
Dive – short for FullDive  
Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
Experience Points – the points earned for each quest completed and each monster killed  
FullDive – the use of technology to fully immerse one's conscience in a virtual reality  
GM – **G**ame **M**oderator  
NERDLES – **Ner**ve **D**irect **L**inkage **E**nvironment **S**ystem (a surgically implanted chip that allows the FullDive system to interface with the brain – the surgically implanted part may or may not be canon as it was something I thought seemed more logical than it just being part of the interface helmet)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
Respawn – a reset of the player's character after the character has 'died' within the game  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline  
Skill Points – Experience points that are applied towards mastery of an in game skill

**Notes: **

* 1st and 3rd Quote by Klein from episode one of the anime and chap two of the on-line light novel series.  
* 2nd Quote by Kirito from episode one of the anime and chap two of the on-line light novel series.

* * *

Harry's Game Data/Stats (Start of Game):

**Classification:** Human Player  
**Level:** 1  
**HP:** 350/350  
**Col:** 8,500 (5000 carried over from Beta)

**Main Equipment:**

Basic Shovel – Shovel used for digging traps – very weak and easily broken  
Rope – Rope made from plant fibers used to create traps – easily cut  
Boots – simple boots that make lots of noise  
Standard Clothes – Basic clothing with no special capabilities

**Skill Slots:** 10 (four extra slots carried over from Beta Test)  
**Equipped Skills:** (Basic 1-250 pts, Advanced 251-500 pts, Proficient 501-750 pts, Expert 751-999 pts, &amp; Master 1000 pts)

Acrobatics – 201  
Detection – 237  
Fishing – 218  
Hiding – 242  
Listening – 252  
Night Vision – 212  
Searching – 250  
Sprint – 266  
Tracking – 232  
Trapping – 254

**Unarmed Skills:** 5

Escape – 249  
Camping – 224  
Navigation – 201  
Scouting – 206  
Research – 214

**Notes:** To calculate the HP for any given level I used the following formula: [175(L – 1) + 350] where L = player's level and 350 represents a player's HP at level one. So, using Harry's beta level (23) as an example; [175(23-1) + 350 = 4200]

* * *

**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	3. Experience

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Three: Experience

_Friday, November 14, 2019 7:00 AM_

Harry covered up a yawn as he stepped out of the town for the first time since the day of the game's launch. The players had now been trapped in the game for a little over a week and the despair was really starting to set in for those that were only just now realizing that there was no use pretending that this wasn't happening. Quite a few people had died during those first nine days and that only made matters worse for those who were unhappy with their lot once it really sunk in that those that died in the game weren't going to be regenerated. Harry had spent that time improving his grasp of spoken Japanese (by using his Listening Skill to eavesdrop which also gained him Skill Points) and gathering as much information about what was happening within the game as he could.

He was now ready to strike out on his own so that he could focus on training without worrying about anyone discovering that he'd been one of the one thousand beta testers (technically he was number one thousand two since Dudley had been number one thousand one). Beta testers had quickly become outcasts within the game due to the fact that they had inside knowledge about the game and that so few of them were willing to share that knowledge with the other players. There was also the fact that he was still wearing his created avatar (he had deleted the gifted mirror straight from his Inventory the first chance he got so as to avoid being uncovered as a child in the game) and he feared someone would figure that out and accuse him of cheating because no one else (that he knew of) still hid behind an avatar.

A quick look around the fields surrounding Hajimari no Machi revealed hundreds of players attacking the Frenzy Boars in the area in an effort to level up; more than a few yelling matches breaking out when one player poached another player's boar at the last minute. Shaking his head, Harry activated his Sprint Skill and dashed off in the direction of the out of the way corner where he'd set up his traps that first day. As he traveled, Harry was pleased to discover that his sprinting distance had increased from twenty-five yards to fifty yards and hoped that meant that it wouldn't be long before he was performing on his previous mastery level for that Skill.

Upon reaching his hidden corner of the field, Harry took a moment to inspect the area for other players before he began digging a pit trap. It took him four hours to make the pit deep enough and wide enough to hold up to three Frenzy Boars; he would need to gain more Skill Points before he could move more than a few inches of 'dirt' with each swing of the shovel. He would have liked to have filled the bottom of the floor with sharpened wooden stakes in order to obtain easy kills but he needed to have at least five hundred Skill Points before he could create lethal pit traps. Trap set, Harry went searching for a small herd of Frenzy Boar that he could lure into the trap; gaining Skill Points for both the Tracking and Searching Skills.

At the end of the day, Harry had amassed over four hundred Experience Points (which had brought him up to level three; the number of Points needed to reach the next level almost doubling with each successful level increase), gathered eight uncommon Items (and dozens of common ones), earned several hundred Col, increased the number of Skill Points in half of his Equipped Skills and a couple of his Unarmed Skills, and gained two levels. Overall it was a profitable day for the nine year old and he was looking forward to doing the same thing again the following day.

He spent the last forty-five minutes of daylight in the game setting up camp in a small copse of trees quite some distance from his pit trap; taking the time to trap the perimeter of his camp in order to avoid getting attacked by any of the various wandering monsters that were active during the night. Once his camp was as secure as he could make it, he pulled a coil of rope from his Inventory and quickly formed the required knots to create a hammock high up in the branches so that he could sleep out of reach of predators and players alike (after checking to make certain the tree wasn't home to any of the game's flying monsters).

Harry then spent another three hours practicing his limited Night Vision and Listening Skills while he nibbled on a loaf of bread he'd purchased prior to leaving the village safely hidden behind the foliage of the copse. Twice he had to climb down and dispose of Ravenous Wolves that had walked into his traps; the nocturnal monsters drawn to the copse by his scent. He could have just left them but then they'd draw additional wolves and he'd lose Skill Points if his traps broke and the wolves escaped because he left the monsters tangled in them. He drifted off to sleep around nine in the evening, secure in the knowledge that his traps would protect him and that the sound of the traps activating would wake him.

Harry woke with the rising of the sun (at exactly five-thirty in the morning like every morning prior – having long since changed over to the in-game clock rather than remain on real time due to the awkwardness of the time difference since the game day/night cycle coincided with the game's clock) and stretched out his sleep cramped muscles as he listened to the surrounding area for any threats. He then set about dismantling his traps and unraveling his hammock so he could return to his pit trap in order to spend another day leveling up and gathering Items to sell back in the market,

So far he'd acquired boar tusks, boar meat, boar hide, wolf hide, and wolf teeth in addition to a bronze dagger, two leather helmets, and five decorative feathers. The tusks, hides, teeth, and feathers were all materials that were required to make new clothes and armor while the tusks and teeth could also be used to create weapons. The meat, of course, was intended to be 'eaten'. The quality and rarity of each Item would play a huge part on the value assigned to each Item in addition to affecting the final rating of any clothing, armor, or weapon created from the Item(s).

On the way back to his secluded section of the field, he stumbled across a nest of Vicious Vipers and spent a half an hour fighting against the six venomous monsters. Grumbling over how much of a nuisance the legless monsters were, Harry barely bothered to read through the Experience Windows from all six creatures before he continued on his way. Upon reaching his pit trap, the nine year old discovered that he'd caught another pair of wolves during the night and the two monsters had half ruined the bottom of the trap in their efforts to escape (though they'd obviously failed seeing as how they were still there).

The wolves proved a bit more difficult to snare and remove from the trap than the Frenzy Boars from the day before and by the time he'd dealt with both creatures, Harry was in a foul mood. The only good thing was that he received double the amount of Trapping Skill Points for successfully holding the wolves in a trap for five hours and he had reached level four. That meant he now only needed another one hundred and twenty Skill Points in order to unlock the lethal pit trap (he had unlocked the hangman's snare during the night; bringing his current trap arsenal up to three).

Sighing, Harry spent an hour repairing his pit trap (enlarging it and making it deeper so that it could hold a higher number of monsters and would do more damage when they dropped). He then scampered off to track down his next group of prey.

The rest of the day was spent tracking and killing monsters. He faced at least a dozen Frenzy Boars, another two nests of Vicious Vipers, a pack of Ravenous Wolves he'd disturbed while luring a larger than normal boar towards his trap, and at least six Plains Vultures that had been attracted by his activities of the past two days. He had gained both the spike trap (the lethal pit trap) and the net trap (to catch airborne prey) and his trap efficiency had improved dramatically as he once again reached the five hundred mark in Skill Points for the Trapping Skill.

His Tracking, Searching, Scouting, and Navigation Skills had steadily improved throughout the day as well, as did his Sprint, Escape, and Camping Skills. He still needed to work on his Acrobatics, Detection, Fishing, Hiding, and Research Skills though; since those five had gained the fewest number of Skill Points over the past two days (Research only possible to master by Listening to the gossip and rumors spread by other players and NPCs within the game or reading through Rare or Archaic Tombs found in hidden Treasure Chests and collected from obscure Quests).

A quick check of his Inventory told him that he was going to have to cut his camping trip short a couple of days as he didn't really have much room left in his Inventory and the last thing he wanted to do was waste any Items. So, Harry dismantled the last of his traps (filling in the pit he'd dug and unraveling his snares) and Sprinted back to the city while there was still plenty of daylight left. He arrived in Hajimari no Machi with the setting of the sun and he headed directly to the inn that he'd stayed at during his first week in the game.

He purchased a hot meal and booked a room for the night within minutes of entering the bustling pub that was part of the inn. He took his time to enjoy his first hot meal in two days (he had only packed bread for his camping trip since he had no in-game Cooking Skills). As he ate, he listened to the conversations of the other players and was disturbed to learn that another hundred people had died during the two days he'd been gone. He nearly cringed when he learned that two beta testers had been driven out of town by angry mobs and actually scowled when he heard that the Aincrad Liberation Force (ALF) was forcefully drafting any solo players and small Guild Members that reached level five into their Guild (for their protection, of course).

Thankfully, he was still at level four (just barely) and he fully intended to head towards the next town before he could be forced to join the Guild. Or, at least, that was what he planned to do just as soon as he sold his surplus Items and stocked up on food and supplies. There was a chance that there would be members of the ALF drafting the more active solo players in the next town too but because the largest concentration of players could still be found around Hajimari no Machi, he seriously doubted there would be as many recruiters in the other villages as there were in Hajimari no Machi.

At least, not at this point in the game; once more time had passed and the players began to spread out more, the reach of ALF would also spread.

Pushing the matter out of his mind (since he was confident that he could avoid the members of ALF long enough to sneak off into the nearest dungeon), Harry finished his stew before heading up to his room to take a bath and get some rest. After a long soak in the tub, the young gamer reveling in the simulated sensation of floating in a tub of hot water, Harry changed into a set of pajamas and checked the locks on both the door and the windows before he crawled into bed. After two days spent working his avatar to the bone (figuratively speaking), Harry was asleep before his head touched the pillow.

The nine year old was once again up with the sun the next morning but unlike most mornings, he didn't immediately jump out of bed to start the day. Prior to getting himself trapped in the online gaming world that he considered his true home, Harry had never had the chance to enjoy the simple pleasures in life; such as lying abed in the morning, eating his fill, or playing around all day long just doing what he wanted to do. It was such a novel experience that he tended to take the time to enjoy his new found freedom to the fullest every chance he got; even after being trapped inside the game for twelve days.

Sighing in contentment, Harry opened up his Inventory and began sorting through his Items to determine what he wanted to sell, what he would need to keep, and what could be used to trade for those Items that can't be bought. Once he was finished with that, he spent an hour pouring over the city map in order to locate a player merchant who might be willing to purchase his Items. He hoped to avoid selling to the NPC stores because they only purchased Items for set amounts that were far below their worth; regardless of their quality. Once he had noted three likely looking merchants, he spent two hours working on his Acrobatic Skills; one of the few Skills he could gain Points for while in the city (Listening, Night Vision, Searching, and Research the other four he had).

It was just after ten in the morning when Harry decided he'd procrastinated long enough. He quickly gathered up anything he'd taken off during the night and double checked his Inventory to make certain he hadn't forgotten anything. He then made his way downstairs and checked out of his room before he headed off to the market place where the first player merchant had set up a stall. It didn't take him long to find the stall and he grimaced when he noted the large crowd of players hovering around the woman that ran the stall.

Since he had no desire to join the crowd or stick around waiting for the other players to leave, Harry immediately pulled up his map to find the shortest route to the next player run shop. Two minutes later, he was once against moving through the streets of the town as he steadily dodged around the other players on the street. Harry had a little trouble finding the stall in question (it had been set up in one of the less traveled sections of the town) and he was pleased to note that there were not many people currently hovering around the stall (most of the players still in town currently out in the fields looking to level up or visiting the more visible shops and stalls).

Harry took a moment to study the man running the stall; a tall black man with broad shoulders and plenty of muscle visible through his skintight sleeveless shirt and armor chest plate. The man was bald with a short cropped goatee and twin cuffs clipped to his left ear and while his overall appearance was intimidating, his face held an open sort of kindness in it that Harry had rarely ever seen in real life. The double handed axe strapped to his back spoke of experience and completed the warrior look that the man embodied. Nodding to himself, Harry decided to see if the man was as honest as he appeared to be or if it was nothing but a fake front to draw in unsuspecting customers.

"_Good morning, sir,_" Harry greeted carefully as he finally approached the merchant after the last customer had finished her business and left the area, taking care not to mangle the words too terribly so as not to offend the man. "_Are you interest in buy Items?_"

"_Japanese is not your native language is it?_" the man retorted with a ready grin while Harry grimaced over the revelation that he'd mangled his request despite the care he'd taken.

"_Sorry. Guilty,_" Harry laughed ruefully as he sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. "_Am still learn speak._"

The man laughed with him for a moment before asking, "_Why don't you tell me what language you usually speak?_"

"English," Harry replied hopefully; he had no issues with learning to speak Japanese but finding another who also spoke English would make life so much easier until he got a better grasp of the language.

"You're in luck; I'm fluent in English as well as Japanese, Spanish, and Italian. You can call me, Agil."

"I'm James, and you just made my day, Mr. Agil, I've been trying to learn more Japanese since I got here but it's not easy without an internet connection or a handy dictionary."

"It's just Agil; no mister needed young man. And I am always willing to help out a fellow player," Agil countered as he held his hand out in greeting. "Now, I believe you mentioned something about having stuff for sale? What Items do you have and what is their quality rating?"

"Sorry, old habit," Harry replied as he shyly shook the man's hand and tentatively returned the smile that Agil had flashed at him. "And I have a bunch of monster meats, hides, teeth, claws, and feathers and some common weapons that I don't need. I want to sell most of it but I don't mind trading if you have anything I need."

"Anything in particular that you are looking for?"

"Yes; I need sturdy ropes, steel wire, a steel shovel, a sturdy fishing rod, sturdy boots, and some durable leather gloves. I also need a steel dagger if you have one. If not, an iron dagger would be better than what I have."

"What? No weapons or armor? What good is a dagger or a shovel going to do you when you stumble on a nest of monsters?"

"I use traps and pay close attention to where I'm going," Harry confessed with a shrug. "I've done alright for the most part and once I know where a monster's weak spot is, it is easy to kill them once they are caught in my traps."

"Interesting, I didn't think trapping would be as effective as a good axe or decent sword in dealing damage to the local monsters. Let's see what you have then."

Harry nodded and complied with the request as he opened up his Inventory and initiated the trade option. Agil let out an impressed whistle when he saw that the quality of the goods Harry was looking to sell or trade were fifteen and twenty points higher than most other players had brought in over the past few days; the game logic awarded better quality Items when players used the more risky Skills to kill the monsters. Even the meat was of a better quality and still relatively fresh and therefore far easier to resale. The two of them haggled over prices for a few minutes (neither of them having a high Sales or Purchase Negotiation Skill at the moment, though Agil had the advantage as a merchant) before goods and money changed hands.

"If you pick up anything else worthwhile, look me up," Agil insisted as they shook hands at the end of the trade.

"I will," Harry replied enthusiastically at the thought of having someone willing to buy more Items from him.

"If you want, I can also help you with your Japanese."

"Oh, you don't have to trouble yourself on my account; I'm sure I can muddle through on my own."

"It won't be any trouble; I want to help you."

"I wouldn't want to be a burden."

"Helping you to improve your grasp of Japanese would not be a burden. Knowing how to speak, read, and write the language fluently so that you can communicate with the other players could very well mean the difference between life and death in this cursed game."

"I don't know… It's really nice of you to offer but I'm leaving town today…"

"If you are willing to add me to your Friend List, we can easily use the in-game messenger for most of the lessons so you don't have to stick around town if you'd rather be out gaining Experience."

"I…"

"Please don't say no, I'd forever worry about you if you don't take me up on my offer. If it will make you feel better, I'll even accept payment for the lessons either in cash or in Items. That way you don't have to see my offer as charity."

"I… but… alright," Harry replied as the man held his gaze with dark eyes filled with sincerity, open concern, and a hint of pure stubbornness that told Harry the man wasn't going to let him walk away until he agreed.

The moment he accepted the offer, the man beamed at him once more as he opened up his Menu and sent Harry a Friend Request. The nine year old felt a measure of relief as he accepted the request and sent one back in return, part of him well aware that it would be far harder to navigate the game without a better grasp of the language used in the game. The two of them parted ways at that point and Harry waved to the man one last time before he left for the more frequented side of the market so he could stop off in the nearest NPC shop in order to pick up those Items that Agil had not had in stock or didn't actually carry (such as the various Game Crystals).

There was a new spring in his step as he wandered through the town; he'd made a pretty penny off the sale and traded for some high quality Items (even if they were just common low-level Items). He had also made a potential client for future jobs which was a far better prospect than just collecting whatever he could and hoping he could find someone that would buy the stuff from him. That the man was willing to help him learn how to speak Japanese fluently was only an added bonus since that was one skill he couldn't really learn through the course of the game alone (though he had picked up a bit by Listening). Not that the man had actually given him much of a choice in the matter.

The child in disguise paused with his hand on the door to the shop he was about to enter as he realized he'd just made his first ever friend; no one else had ever asked to be placed on his Friend List (or if they had asked, he'd not understood their request at the time). Nor had anyone ever before insisted on helping him. A lump formed in his throat and the back of his eyes stung as a strong wave of emotion passed through him at that thought. He'd never had a friend before. The other children at school had always ignored him and he wasn't allowed outside once he got home. He'd also been far too shy during the beta test to talk to any of the players beyond the basics needed for trades; part of which was due to the fact that he didn't know much of the language when he first started.

It was an accomplishment that had been far easier than he'd ever imagined it would be and it was a reaffirmation that this world was his true home.

Feeling even better now, Harry let a true smile form on his face as he opened the door to the shop and stepped inside so he could finish buying his supplies. Ten minutes later, he was back outside and heading towards the town gate that opened up onto the road leading towards the next town. He couldn't keep the grin off his face or the slight bounce out of his step as he crossed the town; his emotions running on an all time high that could be equated to a sugar rush in a normal child. Harry was so wrapped up in his good mood that he failed to see the trouble that was brewing at the exit gate.

"_Halt!_" a sharp voice ordered quite unexpectedly; bringing Harry out of his happy daydream.

Harry frowned and scowled at the brute of a man that was suddenly blocking his path. He had brownish orange hair that was mostly slicked back with several spikes sticking out; almost like the horns on a dinosaur. He was dressed in dull grays, browns, and off whites with leather chest piece over top and the handle of a sword stuck up from over his right shoulder. Harry disliked the man's angry brown eyes the most and he just knew the guy was going to cause trouble.

"_No one under level ten may pass through this gate_," the man pompously declared as he looked down his nose at Harry (even though they were roughly the same height thanks to Harry's avatar). "_You are also required to register with the Aincrad Liberation Force since you're close to reaching level five._"

Harry arched an eyebrow and leaned around the man to glance down the road that led to the next town. He then stood back and studied the man that was blocking his way and telling him how to play the game. After a brief moment of reflection, Harry came to the conclusion that the man was a lot like Dudley. With that comparison firmly in mind, Harry shrugged his shoulders and turned around to walk away from the gate while keeping an eye on the people milling around the exit. The moment he had a clear path through the gate, Harry spun around on his heel and pushed up onto the balls of his feet so he could activate his Sprint Skill.

The disguised nine year old moved passed the man in the blink of an eye before the man even suspected what he was about to do. Harry paused on the road just long enough to give the now fuming man a jaunty salute before dashing off down the road while more than a few witnesses (who'd also been blocked from leaving the city) laughed themselves silly over how easily Harry had gotten one over on the bully blocking the gate. A few of them even slipped out of town while the guard was distracted by Harry's cheeky departure; earning the young gamer quite a bit of gratitude.

Once he was certain that the bonehead hadn't given chase, Harry dropped his Sprint and focused on his Listening and Detection Skills in order to avoid any ambushes. His earlier feeling of contentment soon returned tenfold as he slipped beneath the canopy of limbs and leaves created by the trees that lined the road and the grin was soon back on his face as he cataloged each and every glowing green footprint that crossed the road within the last two hours once he activated his Tracking Skill.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Fukkatsu no Heya – Room of Resurrection  
Hajimari no Machi – Starting City or Town of Beginnings  
Ken no Sekai – Sword Art Online

**Game Terminology:**

ALF – **A**incrad **L**iberation **F**orce later called The Army by the in-game players  
Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
Experience Points – the points earned for each quest completed and each monster killed  
Guild – group of players that work together for a common goal  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline  
Skill Points – Experience points that are applied towards mastery of an in game skill

* * *

**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	4. Disenchantment

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Four: Disenchantment

_Sunday, December 21, 2019 2:45 PM_

Harry thought there was nothing that could bring him down.

After six weeks in the game, he'd surpassed his beta Stats by leaps and bounds because he'd learned from the mistakes he'd made in the beta version and the fact that he'd not needed to leave the game for any reason. One more kill or a measly seventy-five Experience Points would see him reaching level thirty (he'd only reached level twenty-three in the beta test). He'd also mastered four Skills within the last week (Tracking, Trapping, Camping, and Escape) and was well on his way to mastering another five (Night Vision, Sprint, Searching, Fishing, and Scouting). His other Skills were all in the high six hundreds or low seven hundreds after he'd spent a considerable amount of time earning Skill Points in order to improve his effectiveness while in the dungeons hunting for specific monsters, creatures, or treasures.

His reputation as an honest guide and skilled tracker had grown considerably as well (also surpassing the reputation he'd earned in the beta test), all thanks to Agil. The friendly merchant had taken Harry under his wing after their first trade and helped him out; sending clients his way when Agil didn't have what they needed. The man had also followed through on his promise to see to it that Harry learned enough Japanese to communicate with most of the players as long as they didn't talk too fast (most of those lessons taking place through the in-game messenger system while the man tested him each time they met up in person once a week).

In return, Harry kept the man supplied with uncommon and rare Items for very reasonable rates and often hunted down difficult to find Items whenever the man found a lead on something new. When he wasn't hunting down Items for Agil, Harry was off in the various dungeons within the first three floors of Aincrad leveling up and hunting out the harder to kill monsters in order to learn more about them or guiding another player that had hired his services (most of his clients coming from contacts that Agil knew).

He was on just one such job at the moment; playing guide and tracker for a small Guild that wished to obtain a hard to find plant that was one of the main ingredients required to create a more powerful healing potion.

The plant was known to be guarded by packs of nasty little monsters called Fanged Furgrin; they were a cross between a squirrel and a troll with huge razor sharp canines that reminded Harry of a saber-toothed tiger. They stood at about three feet tall, had mossy brown and green fur that blended into the bark of the surrounding trees, and glowing red eyes that creeped Harry out for some odd reason that escaped him. During the winter months their fur developed patches of white to better blend in with the ice and snow that clung to the trees.

The nine year old had already killed three of the menaces with his snares and his clients had killed another four. There were only six more left and one of them was the boss; Foulnor Furgrin the Fanged. After the initial scuffle, Harry had left the Boss Monster for the Guild he was escorting to deal with while he led the five underlings towards his last trap since Harry's traps were far less effective against the Boss Monsters due to the rules of the game. Harry whooped and hollered with abandon as the five creatures tore after him through the underbrush that filled the forest; his entire being filled with excitement and anticipation.

Ten more steps and Harry activated Sprint to jump over the hidden spiked pit trap he'd set up earlier. Behind him, the five Furgrin ran right onto the flimsy cover of snow, twigs, and leaves and crashed beneath the surface a heartbeat later and Harry whooped again as he watched five Experience Point Windows open as all five Furgrin were confirmed dead and his Player Level rose to thirty. Laughing over the perfectly executed lure and trap, Harry checked to make certain there were no other monsters in the area before he set about disabling the trap.

It was at that moment that everything went wrong.

The first sign Harry had that something wasn't right was a spike of blinding pain stabbing into his skull approximately where his lightning bolt scar sat on his real body. Harry paused and rubbed at his head before shaking off the pain and returned to filling in the trap. Just a few seconds later, the pain returned sharper than before to pierce him behind his scar again and at the base of his skull (where he had placed the extra NERDLES device several months earlier) at the same time and he staggered drunkenly as the shock of it took his breath away.

Icy cold tendrils of fear filled Harry; he had never before felt true pain within the game. Just as quickly as the pain came, it vanished and left Harry panting as he supported himself up against a nearby tree. The next two minutes passed by with agonizing slowness as he slowly tried to convince himself that the pain had just been his imagination. He had just about succeeded in writing off the entire thing as a daydream when a warning message appeared above his head and began flashing as it declared him an unstable element.

Two seconds later, his entire body was engulfed in burning pain while it felt as if his heart had exploded outwards. Harry took two steps away from the tree, dropped down onto his knees and let loose a scream of pure agony as the pain intensified until it felt like his entire body was being ripped apart from the inside out. The seven members of the Guild he'd been assisting came rushing to his aide just a few minutes later only to stumble to a stop as they watched him burst into a shower of red crystal shards with the sound of breaking glass.

And still he felt pain.

Instead of vanishing like the other avatars and players that died though, Harry's body was reconstructed piece by piece while the pain continued to tear him apart inside and out. His clients continued to stare at him, their expressions now filled with a mixture of disbelief and horror as he reached out to them in supplication. The leader of the Guild stepped forward on shaky feet to offer him a hand but before he could touch Harry's hand, the nine year old's avatar shattered yet again. Over and over again his body would explode in a crash of breaking glass only to be painstakingly rebuilt back out of the pieces before the cycle began again.

After the fourth time, his clients ran away in terror and Harry was left alone with the agony that had engulfed him.

In the real world, Harry's body convulsed inside of his hidden sanctuary as his magic forcefully pushed his soul from his body and integrated it into the game, using the NERDLES as a bridge, in order to prevent him from dying as his body began failing due to six weeks of neglect (his magic no longer able to keep him alive without food, water, or proper rest). While Harry's internal magic worked to protect his soul, the protective magic in the blood wards began locking his body into stasis inch by inch (starting at his feet) in order to prevent his body from decaying once his soul had been removed.

Locked behind a bubble of dark magic buried beneath the lightning bolt scar on his forehead, the sliver of Voldemort's soul that had latched onto him the night his parents were murdered cursed and screamed as the combined magics that were trying to save the boy slowly killed the soul piece at the same time.

It took six long hours for magic to preserve Harry's nine year old body and integrate his soul into the virtual reality world he'd been trapped inside; six agonizing hours in which Harry physically, mentally, and spiritually suffered through an endless loop of pain. The accidental horcrux never stood a chance against the protection of the combined magics and the moment Harry's brain was preserved (which coincided with the completion of his integration into the system) the remains of that sliver of Voldemort's soul was forcibly shoved out of Harry's scar and into his cupboard where it was promptly shredded by the blood wards.

Inside of the game, Harry's avatar had continued to shatter and reconstruct itself throughout the entire integration and preservation process that his body and soul had undergone. Each time his body was reassembled, his digital body became just a little more lifelike and grew just a little more accurate when it came to his physical appearance until there was no difference between his avatar and his current physical self. When the torture finally ended, Harry lay curled up in a fetal position with his face buried into the frozen snow that covered the ground as he sobbed hoarsely (his throat raw from screaming) in response to the sudden lessening of pain.

It took another hour before he found the strength to push himself up off the floor and the moment his body was upright he was forced to roll forward as he vomited up blood. He stared at the red liquid that had poured from his mouth in confusion as the game had never before given visualization of actual blood; it was always a scattering of glowing red shards that shattered like glass before vanishing. Unable to help himself, Harry reached out and ran his fingers through the red mess and rubbed the substance between his fingers with detached fascination as his nose was filled with the scent of copper and he felt the sticky warmth coating his fingers.

It was at that point that Harry realized that he was no longer wearing the twenty-something year old avatar he'd created for the game; his body had been forcefully reverted to his actual physical appearance. Before he could figure out how that had happened, since he vaguely recalled that he'd destroyed the mirror thing early on in the game, the eager howls of a pack of wolves filled the forest surrounding him and he knew that the creatures were hunting him (his earlier screams would have drawn their attention). Wearily climbing up onto his feet despite the deep seated ache he still felt all the way down in his bones, Harry began searching for a place to hole up for the evening.

He never noticed that the blood he'd vomited up shattered the moment he stepped away from it.

As he moved deeper into the forest, Harry hoped that his clients had made it back to the village safely and that they would send help because he wasn't certain if he was up to finding his way back on his own right now. A glance down at his runty little nine year old body had him grimacing and thinking that maybe it was better if no one found him because he was no longer the strong adult he'd portrayed himself as for the last six weeks. Either no one would believe him when he told them who he was, they would curse him for lying to them all of this time, or they'd think he'd found a cheat code and refused to share it.

The only one that had ever suspected that he wasn't old as he appeared was Agil and Harry had always brushed off the man's subtle inquiries by saying he'd always been told he was mature for his age (which was true enough). But he doubted that even Agil suspected that he'd been less than half of the age he'd made himself out to be. Tears began filling Harry's eyes as he thought about Agil turning cold and striking him from his Friend List; just the mere thought of losing his first and only friend cut him to the quick.

Near midnight, the troubled and tormented nine year old stumbled upon the partially hollowed out stump of an old fir tree and he robotically started to set up a perimeter of traps to protect himself from the wolves he knew were hunting him. As he set up the first trap, he was confused when there was a fifteen second delay before the trap actually formed. Harry grew increasingly frightened when the next three traps he set up were affected by the same delay despite the fact that he had attempted to use a different trap each time.

Unaware that the delay was a one time deal due to his magic testing, copying, and assimilating the game code so that his magic could recreate the traps as spells, Harry stopped setting up traps and stood frozen with fear for several minutes.

The nearby howls of hunting wolves broke Harry from his stupor and he quickly dropped down onto his knees and used his shovel to enlarge the hollow inside of the stump enough so that he would fit inside of it. Tears poured down his face once more as there was yet another delay before the shovel removed the dirt like it was supposed to. Harry feared that whatever had happened to him earlier had corrupted all of his in-game Skills when it was only his magic assimilating yet another Skill.

Before he could completely panic, the loud crunching of many large paws running through the layer of ice and snow that covered the forest floor reached his ears and he bolted into the hollow and used his shovel to shift the dirt from the floor in an effort to block off the entrance; his magic would interfere with that process as well and made it so the thin wall of dirt hardened to rock and blended in perfectly with the outside of the stump; effectively hiding the hollow.

Trembling in terror and praying that the flimsy wall would protect him (completely unaware of the changes that had been made to the wall on the outside), Harry scrambled to return his shovel to his Inventory and took out his dagger as he pressed his back up against the wall of the trunk as far away from the entrance as he could get. The pack of wolves that had been hunting him broke into the clearing just seconds later and he could hear their faint snarls and growls as they tried to find him. A sharp yelp was followed by the faint snap of the hangman's snare he'd set being activated; the sound signifying that at least one wolf had gotten caught by his faulty traps.

That the trap had worked made Harry feel just a little better right up until he heard claws scraping at the side of the stump where the entrance sat. His heart rose up into his throat at the thought of being caught like a rat in a trap with no where to go. Just when he thought the wolf was going to break into the hollow, the pack let out a chorus of howls and growls before they left the clearing. Harry sagged in relief and let out a soft sob over how close he'd come to being found by the monsters when he was in no condition to fight them.

His relief was short lived though as not more than twenty-five minutes after the wolves had fled the clearing, he picked up the faint sounds of something large entering the clearing outside of his stump.

The footsteps grew louder until they were right outside his stump where they began circling all around him and Harry began having trouble breathing as he strained to listen to what sounded like the growls and grumbles of some large monster over the pounding in his ears as his heart rate shot through the roof. He had to choke back the scream of pure terror that climbed up the back of his throat when he heard something heavy thud into the top of the stump he was hiding inside of; knowing that if he made a single sound the monster that had driven off the wolves would find him and kill him.

He had no idea how long he sat there paralyzed with fear while some creature hunted for him before it seemingly gave up and left. Even after it sounded like the monster had left, he dared not leave the stump for fear that the creature was merely waiting for him to show himself and he eventually drifted off to sleep propped up against the side of the trunk with his dagger still firmly clasped in his hands. His dreams would be plagued with nightmares and phantom pains.

Harry remained holed up in the hollow stump for three days, sleeping off the lingering pain and exhaustion from the glitch that had nearly killed him before the annoying buzzing of the system telling him that his inbox was full pulled him out of his depression. Harry reluctantly opened his message box to find a hundred messages from Agil and he felt a small flash of guilt over ignoring the man for so long. He didn't bother with the first ninety-nine messages; skipping over them to open the most recent one and read through the frantic letter.

_Where the hell are you!? What happened to you!? Why aren't you answering my  
messages!? I know you are still alive; so why won't you tell me what the hell is  
going on, man!? Talk to me, buddy; let me help you. I can't help you if you don't  
answer me. _

_Please, James, please answer me!_

Harry sighed and hit the reply button. He then stared at the screen for several long minutes before he typed out a reply trying to explain what had happened to him. He erased his response twice before he finally settled on a rather short reply that he hoped would placate the gruff, but kind, older man.

_Sorry, I worried you. I'm safe for now. Don't know when I'll be back._

Harry hit the send button before he could change his mind yet again. He then meticulously deleted all of the unopened messages in his inbox before closing out the Menu. After that, he used his Listening and Detection Skills in order to determine if there were any monsters lying in wait for him just outside of his hiding place. When he didn't hear or sense anything, Harry carefully tore down the wall he'd made and hesitantly crawled out of the stump. Out of habit, he glanced over to where he'd set up the traps three days earlier and saw that all of the traps had either expired or been sprung while he'd stayed hidden inside of the stump.

After staring about the small clearing without really seeing it for several long minutes, Harry tried to get his bearings so he could determine the shortest, safest route out of the forest. He was just pulling up the partial map he had of the area when he received another message from Agil. Harry hesitated a brief moment before opening it.

_Thank kamisama! I was really starting to get worried. Where are you? I'll come  
get you._

Harry sighed and closed his eyes in pain as his heart ached with the fear of losing his only friend as he imagined the man hating him the moment he learned the truth about Harry's age. Biting his lip, he stifled the urge to bawl as he shot back an even shorter reply.

_I'm fine. You don't need to get me._

Harry had barely switched the screen back to the map he needed to view when he got yet another reply. He eyed the message worriedly as he could well imagine just what the man would have to say to him. He briefly considered deleting the message without reading it but knew that wouldn't stop the man from spamming his inbox again until he actually replied; so he opened it.

_Don't you pull that crap with me! Besides; I'm already here on the third floor  
inside of the Furgrin Forest. Where are you?_

This time, Harry let out a soft whine of frustration as he stared at the message. The last thing he wanted was for Agil to see him as he was now. He didn't want the man to hate him because he'd pretended to be an adult all of this time. Before he could think of a suitable reply, Agil sent yet another message.

_I don't have all day, buddy; I have a shop to run and I've already lost three days  
trying to find you. _

Harry hunched his shoulders and took several steps backwards instinctively, feeling more than a little trapped as he imagined Agil growing angrier. Icy numbness crept up his spine as yet another message came through for him before he could even think about replying to either of the last two messages.

_Don't be stubborn, gaki; I'm not the only one who's been out here freezing his ass  
off looking for you. Just tell me where you are already!_

Bowing his head, Harry swallowed with difficulty as he realized he was running out of options. He could hide in the stump again and pray they'd give up, he could tell Agil where to find him, or he could run. Coward that he was, Harry chose to run under the misconception that fleeing would protect his friendship and he sent Agil one last message.

_No._

Harry didn't even bother to check the map as he turned north and Sprinted away from his temporary camp; the nine year old far too frightened this time to notice the initial delay before the Skill activated. He reached the edge of the forest some fifteen minutes later and still didn't stop. He would have Sprinted all the way to the nearest town in order to access a Teleport Gate (he had stopped carrying Teleportation Crystals with him after he'd reached level fifteen in order to save room in his Inventory) if his legs didn't give out on him just a few miles out into field he was in.

His entire body was aching again and he actually felt winded (as if he'd actually spent the last hour running non-stop); feelings that had been arbitrary prior to whatever glitch had happened to him after reaching level thirty.

Needing a moment to catch his breath, Harry hobbled over to the only tree he could see in the entire field and climbed up into its branches to avoid sitting out in the open. He then dug out an apple from his Inventory to take the edge off the hunger he'd been feeling off and on for the past few days and absently took a bite as he tried to figure out what exactly had happened to him in an effort to forget about the fact that he'd just ran out on his only friend. His attention was soon drawn to the apple in his hand when he realized that he could feel a bit of juice from the fruit trickling down his chin and coating his fingers. In fact, the fruit tasted far more natural than it should have.

Furrowing his brow, Harry stared at the fruit before he took another couple of bites in order to see if he could figure out what was different. It wasn't until he bit down on a seed that Harry realized it wasn't just his imagination that the fruit he in his hand was behaving unlike any of the other game fruit he'd eaten previously. The oddness of actually feeling the apple settle in his stomach (once he recognized the sensation) was even more disconcerting as his avatar shouldn't be able to feel the weight of food settling into his stomach. The system's apples should not have seeds, avatars don't get tired using their Skills unless their Hit Points (also sometimes called Health Points or HP) fell into the orange or red, there was not supposed to be any delays in activating his Skills, and avatars don't feel pain, get dizzy, or vomit blood.

His eyes wandered a bit as he tried to puzzle out what had changed (and wondered if any other players had experienced the same thing) until they ended up resting on the shortened golden bar hovering above his head that indicated that his HP level had been cut in half at some point. Harry gasped and his eyes widened comically as he jerked his head up to stare at the HP bar in confusion bordering on hysteria; HP bars were supposed to be green when they were full, yellow when you took a hit that dropped you below three-quarters of your total HP, orange when your HP Level reached about half of your total Points, and red if you had less than one quarter of your HP remaining.

HP bars did _not_ turn gold.

There was no explanation for the change. He could think of nothing that he'd done to corrupt his HP counter only to blanch when he realized that there was a chance it was a side effect of whatever glitch it was that had taken hold of him after he'd reached level thirty. He also hoped the fact that it wasn't displaying the ratio of remaining HP to the total number of HP he had gained was just a side effect of whatever it was that had (hopefully) temporarily turned the bar gold. He opened his Menu to check his Stats in order to put his mind at ease, intentionally ignoring the six new messages that he had from Agil, and felt his breath catch at the back of his throat as he read his new in-game classification.

Only one thing ran through Harry's mind as he stared at the open Menu; _what the hell does Indefinable Immortal Object mean?_ He felt himself grow dizzy when he finally glanced down to check on his HP Total to find that instead of the four digit number he expected there were six dashes and the words; System Error, HP Incalculable.

His head went all fuzzy and he had more than a little trouble breathing as he simply stared at his Stat Page. After nearly twenty minutes had passed, he tore his eyes away from the disturbing revelations and reached out with a shaky hand to close the Menu only for yet another urgent messages to pop up right as his finger connected with the Menu; opening the message instead.

_James, what the hell is going on? Is someone threatening you? Are you trapped some-  
where by a Boss Monster? Does it have anything to do with your last job? I know you  
know how to take care of yourself but you take far too many risks; especially when you  
take into account the fact that you keep telling me that you have no true in-game fighting  
skills. _

_No matter what is going on, you know I'd be willing to help you in any way I can, right?_

Harry closed the message and closed out the Menu; he had no intention of replying. He studiously ignored the troubling golden bar floating above him as he glanced out over the snow covered field and tried not to think anymore. A cold breeze shook the branches of the tree he was hiding in and Harry shivered as he wrapped his arms around his knees and curled up to conserve body heat. He was just considering pulling his blanket out of his Inventory when he was ambushed by the returning flock of Carrion Crows that had made their home in the tree he was sitting in; he'd completely forgotten to check the tree for signs of their nests before he'd taken refuge in it.

He flailed about for several precious seconds before he tumbled down out of the tree and hit the ground hard enough to jar his teeth and leave more than a few painful bruises; the crows chasing after him. He let out an involuntary cry as the enormous birds raked his flesh with claw and beak and he felt pain once more as they drew blood with each attack. Drawing his dagger, Harry struck back at the vicious creatures in an effort to protect himself and he started crying again as the pain continued to grow with each jab of claw and beak.

The last of the birds died several minutes later, leaving Harry surrounded by a dozens of open windows listing the number of Items, Col, and Experience Points he'd gained and copious amounts of his blood. Panting heavily, Harry stared at his bleeding arms before he glanced up at his HP Bar to find it unchanged; he'd taken no further losses to his Hit Points despite the 'injuries' that had been caused to him by the crows. The panic that he'd been struggling with since the moment he'd been caught up in the system glitch blossomed within his chest and for the first time since Harry first discovered the world of Ken no Sekai, he didn't feel the comforting sense of being home that he'd come to associate with the game world.

The world he'd come to consider home had just grown far darker than his former life ever had been.

Harry was still shaking beneath the weight of his fears when he received yet another message from Agil. This time he didn't hesitate to open the message; he desperately needed to pretend that all was right in the world, even if everything had gone all wrong. He was, after all, just a frightened little boy trapped in a deadly game with no escape. Sure, he'd managed to pretend otherwise for the first six weeks of the game thanks to his adult avatar and the belief that the game was nothing more than one big adventure but all of that had been stripped from him in an instant.

_Please stop ignoring me, James; it's Christmas Eve, we should be sitting in the pub,  
drinking ale, and laughing at all of the other guys making spectacles of themselves  
in their quest to impress the ladies. Not sitting out here freezing our asses off out in  
the middle of the forest dodging the local monsters!_

Harry wiped his hands on his pants to clean off the blood that covered them before he hit the reply button; his hands shaking like leaves as he truly opened up to someone for the first time in his life and poured his heart out to the one man that had been a friend to him since the day they'd met close to five weeks earlier.

_I'm scared, Agil. I don't know what happened to me and I don't know how to fix it.  
It hurts and I just want it to stop. This was supposed to be a game but everything  
here is a lie. I was a lie and now I don't know what I am. _

_I know I shouldn't have lied about everything but I was just so scared you'd hate me  
if you knew the truth. I just didn't want to be alone again and it was nice to pretend  
that I really did have a friend. _

_I should have known better. I never should have been here. I never should have  
pretended to be someone that I wasn't. My uncle is right, I ruin everything I touch  
and I am nothing more than a stupid, worthless freak. I only wanted to know what  
it was like to be somebody other than me. _

_I don't know what to do and I don't want to be here anymore but I can't go back. _

Harry clicked the send button without bothering to read what he'd written. He then crawled over to the tree he'd been sitting in earlier and curled up in a ball against the trunk as he tried not to see monsters (both real and imagined) in every shadow that surrounded him; doing his best to ignore the freezing cold as the snow beneath him melted and soaked his pants. He couldn't ever remember a time when he'd ever felt so miserable; not even when he'd been locked inside of his cupboard with no food for a week because Dudley had gotten him in trouble for something he [Harry] hadn't done.

He was just in the middle of convincing himself that Agil would never want to speak to him again now that he knew that Harry had been lying to him, when he got a reply. He slowly reached out to accept the message, all the while believing it would be his only friend telling him to get lost, and nearly deleted the message by mistake due to his hands trembling both from the cold and from his out of control emotions. When he did get the message open, he had trouble reading it at first because of the tears clouding his eyes.

_I'm coming, James, I already told you that I would help. In the mean time, you  
need to tell me where you __**right now**__! No more evasions and no more refusals. We  
can sort out the rest later._

A lump formed in Harry's throat and his eyes began burning from the emotions he felt welling up inside of him. He'd thought for certain that Agil would be angry and tell him to get lost now that he knew Harry had been lying to him. So after taking a moment to calm down, he provided the requested information.

_I'm stuck beneath a large nest of Carrion Crows beside a lone tree in the field to the  
north of Furgrin Forest because I can't go anywhere and it's the only cover there is  
out here. Please be careful, Agil, the crows have already attacked me once and they  
are already regenerating._

Agil's response came back just seconds later;

_Stay right where you are! We'll be there as soon as we can. If you still have your  
trapping supplies and if you haven't already done so; use them to protect yourself  
from the crows! _

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Kami/Kamisama – god/spirit  
Ken no Sekai – Sword Art Online

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
Experience Points – the points earned for each quest completed and each monster killed  
Guild – group of players that work together for a common goal  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
NERDLES – **Ner**ve **D**irect **L**inkage **E**nvironment **S**ystem (a surgically implanted chip that allows the FullDive system to interface with the brain – the surgically implanted part may or may not be canon as it was something I thought seemed more logical than it just being part of the interface helmet)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
PM – **P**rivate **M**essage  
Skill Points – Experience points that are applied towards mastery of an in game skill

* * *

Harry's Game Data/Stats (Glitch/Soul Integration):

**Classification:** Human Player (before glitch)/Indefinable Immortal Object (after glitch)  
**Level:** 30  
**HP:** 5425/5425 (before glitch)/- System Error: HP Incalculable (after glitch)  
**Col:** 895,201

**Main Equipment:**

Steel Shovel – Sturdy shovel used for digging traps  
Steel Wire – Wire that is hard to break/cut and used to create traps  
Hardy Boots – Sturdy boots that make some noise and raise his defense slightly  
Leather Gloves – Sturdy gloves that protect his hands from his trap wires and cables and raise his defense slightly  
Leather Clothes – Sturdy clothes that raise his defense slightly

**Skill Slots:** 13 (four extra slots carried over from Beta Test – three of which are unfilled)  
**Equipped Skills:** (Basic 1-250 pts, Advanced 251-500 pts, Proficient 501-750 pts, Expert 751-999 pts, &amp; Master 1000 pts)

Acrobatics – 673  
Detection – 735  
Fishing – 923  
Hiding – 719  
Listening – 697  
Night Vision – 814  
Searching – 789  
Sprint – 943  
Tracking – 1000  
Trapping – 1000

**Unarmed Skills:** 5

Escape – 1000  
Camping – 1000  
Navigation – 671  
Scouting – 884  
Research – 667

**Notes:** To calculate the HP for any given level I used the following formula: [175(L – 1) + 350] where L = player's level and 350 represents a player's HP at level one. So, using Harry's beta level (23) as an example; [175(23-1) + 350 = 4200]

* * *

**AN:** _I just wanted to point out, in case it wasn't obvious in the chapter, that Harry's soul transfer into the game at level thirty is nothing more than a coincidence. The transfer would have happened no matter where he was, what he was doing, or what level he was at on that exact date at that exact time of the soul transfer because that was when his magic became unable to sustain his body. It was just a twist of fate that he'd leveled up just seconds before the transfer began. _

_As far as Harry's panic; he is a nine year old boy and he's just had his innocence stripped away, of course that is going to affect him no matter how smart he is or how mature he'd been acting up until that point. It will take him some time to bounce back after his ordeal and he'll never regain all that was lost when his soul was shoved out of his body. _

_For those of you who want more information on the soul transfer and the hows and whys that it occurred, that will come later in the story; so please be patient._

**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and edited out unnecessary bits of the author's note._


	5. Truths

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Five: Truths

_Wednesday, December 24, 2019 4:42 PM_

Harry didn't bother setting any of his traps as ordered; he was too tired, too cold, too frightened, in too much pain, and had lost all confidence in the Skills he'd prided himself on prior to reaching level thirty. Instead, he took out his blanket and wrapped it around himself, clutched his dagger in both hands as he huddled up against the tree, and dropped his face down onto his knees. His emotions were so tangled up and twisted that he couldn't even find the energy to wonder who it was that was traveling with Agil. The nine year old let out a strangled whimper when the overlarge and violent birds above began making a ruckus up in the tree; an indication that they nearly had enough numbers to initiate their group attack (the cowards never attacked individually).

A small part of him wondered if the birds would attack him again before his friend reached him or if the murderous mob would attack his friend the moment Agil reached the tree. The newest fear that his friend might die because he'd come to save him didn't have enough time to fully manifest before a familiar voice called out his name and he lifted face just enough to glance southwards where he could see a pair of individuals running towards him. He easily recognized the tall black man as Agil but he had no idea who the shorter person at his side could be; though Harry absently thought the guy looked vaguely familiar.

Feeling even more insecure now that he'd pretty much been found, Harry shrank in on himself even further and pulled the blanket tight as he shivered and watched the pair growing steadily closer. His chest hitched as his breath caught in his throat when the two men (or rather one man and one teen) finally noticed him curled up against the tree. At the same time, the crows in the tree above him began cawing raucously and jumping about the branches as they prepared to launch their attack the moment the pair got within ten yards of the tree. Harry couldn't help but let out a strangled sob as he recalled feeling their beaks and claws slicing through his flesh when they'd attacked him earlier.

"_James? Is that you? Are you alright?_" Agil inquired as he pulled the two handed axe that he carried off his back in preparation for the inevitable battle without slowing down or stopping.

"_Can you run or fight?_" the teen demanded on the heels of Agil's questions as he unsheathed a sword from his back and focused his attention up on the dozens of two foot tall Carrion Crows jumping about the branches of the tree.

Before Harry could reply to either question, the entire flock descended upon the three of them with a vengeance. Beaks and claws shredded Harry's blanket in short order and it wasn't long before he could feel the razor sharp appendages ripping through his skin and clothes once more. One of the birds managed to latch onto his left wrist with one foot; its talons ripping through his flesh like razors as he instinctively jerked and shook his arm in an effort to get the monster off of him. Angry, terrified, and in pain, Harry lashed out blindly as he ducked his head and pressed his face against his knees once more to protect his eyes from the vicious birds.

The longer the attack lasted, the angrier Harry grew until something rose up from inside of him and lashed out at the remaining crows; electrocuting them all in an instant while at the same time flinging their carcasses out and away from him where they promptly shattered into millions of pieces and vanished.

Panting from the exertion and his still churning emotions, Harry slumped back against the tree as a wave of weakness washed through him. If he'd bothered to look up, the nine year old would have noticed his HP Bar (which had already been half empty) dropping dangerously low. It was an indication that Harry had almost completely drained his magical core when his magic had risen to protect him from the crows in response to his emotions and the pain – something that had only been possible because of his soul being integrated into the system.

When a shadow fell over him, Harry automatically threw himself to the side with a sharp cry and scrambled backwards as he immediately thought that he was about to be attacked again only to freeze the moment he looked up and saw Agil standing over him. Swallowing thickly, Harry immediately bowed his head in shame and hunched his shoulders as he waited for the yelling to start.

"_Is that really you, James?_" Agil asked softly as he crouched down just a short ways away from Harry in an obvious effort to not to appear quite so intimidating.

Harry glanced up through his fringe before slowly nodding, his eyes shining with tears, before he dropped his eyes back down to the ground. He scrubbed at his arms beneath the ruined sleeves of his shirt, smearing the blood seeping from his multiple injuries and drawing Agil's and the teen's attention to the multitude of gashes littering his arms, the back of his neck, and his back.

"_Why are you bleeding? How is that even possible?_" the teen questioned with a frown as strode up to Harry and reached down to grab hold of Harry's arm.

Harry scuttled sideways and jerked his arm out of reach of the vaguely familiar but still unknown teen. It was a rather childish reaction but Harry was a child and he'd had a rough few days, so his defensive instincts were still in overdrive despite the exhaustion and pain that was weighing down on him.

"_I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you,_" the teen stated as he backed off a bit and sat down on the ground beside the black merchant. "_I'm Kirito, by the way._"

"_What happened to you, James? How did you end up with the avatar of a child?_" Agil asked in confusion as he leaned forward and tried to catch his eye.

Harry began playing with the hem of his ruined shirt, absently noting how it moved and felt more like real cloth now, before he took a shaky breath and replied, "_This is me; the other me was my avatar. I don't know what happened to me, though. After I got bumped up to level thirty, everything went wrong._" Harry paused and lifted haunted greens eyes to meet Agil's eyes for the first time since the man had arrived as he unconsciously switched over to speaking English; his voice shaking with fear. "I kept shattering over and over and over again. It hurt so bad I wanted to die but I couldn't and there was nothing I could do to stop it. When it was finally over I was like I am now and I ached all over and everything was all messed up."

"The day of the launch, everyone received a mirror that was designed to sync their avatars with their physical bodies; how did you manage to avoid having your avatar synced to your real body along with everyone else's?" Kirito inquired (the teen automatically switching to English in response to Harry's use of the language) in order to give Harry something else to think about aside from the apparent torture he'd suffered through from some kind of glitch in the system.

"I hadn't understood very much of what the mod-bloke said that first night because I didn't know very much Japanese back then and he spoke too fast for me to puzzle out the words I didn't know. The next thing I knew, the other players standing around me were pulling out a mirror from their Inventory and before I could see if I had one too, I saw the others being changed. Everyone else was so angry and scared that I thought the mirrors hurt them so I never took out the one in my Inventory. Once I did learn what the mirror had done, I deleted it from my Inventory because I wasn't supposed to be here and I knew that if someone recognized me, then I'd be in even bigger trouble than I already was."

"You avoided being unmasked as a child on the day of the game's launch due to a mere technicality?" Agil drawled in disbelief. Harry shrugged his shoulders and shifted uncomfortably as he glanced between the two older players. Agil sighed at that point as he asked, "You avoided answering me every time I asked you previously but this time I really need for you to answer me; how old are you, James? You don't look a day over seven or eight but that's impossible because an age restriction was imposed upon the equipment necessary to experience a FullDive. On the other hand, I just can't see you as being thirteen."

"I'm nine," Harry confessed meekly as he dropped his eyes back to the ground in shame.

"That's not possible; none of the technicians would have implanted a NERDLES in a nine year old. Not even for a rather hefty bribe," Kirito insisted with a frown as he apparently just noted how small Harry looked.

"I… I'm not even supposed to have the gaming console. I stole it. My uncle bought it for my cousin but then he threw it away after my cousin made a comment about something he'd learned in this game and I dug it out of the rubbish bin because I wanted to know why my uncle was so mad about what had been said and why he refused to give my cousin back his things. I didn't know you had to have someone put the NERDLES in for you; I just stuck the extra one my uncle had bought to the back of my head where the picture on the package showed it was supposed to go. That was back in the middle of August."

"You were a beta tester," Agil surmised as he immediately understood the significance of the timing.

"Yes."

"Your parents and your friends must be very worried about you," Kirito stated softly, his eyes filled with concern as he eyed the wounds that were visible through Harry's ruined shirt once more. "Your injuries are also still bleeding pretty badly. You said something about being in pain earlier, are you in pain right now?"

"My parents are dead, no one in the real world cares about me, and my only friend is Agil," Harry retorted casually as he poked at the rather nasty gash that ran from between his middle and ring fingers on the back of his left hand down below the thumb before wrapping around the underside of the wrist from where the one crow had grabbed him. "And, yes, the cuts still burn and sting and I still ache all over."

"Surely someone must be concerned for your health since you've been trapped here for so long now," Agil insisted; the older man clearly upset and uncomfortable over the implications of Harry's declaration. "You spoke of your uncle and a cousin; won't they be concerned?"

Harry glanced up at his friend briefly before he turned to stare out over the field as he let out a soft, humorless laugh as he stated, "My aunt and uncle made it a point to remind me on a weekly basis that I am an ungrateful freak and a burden that should have done the world a favor and died in the car crash that killed my parents when I was still just a baby. The only thing they will be concerned about is the fact that I broke the rules; I dared touch something that belonged to my cousin and I stole from them. I'm surprised they didn't pull the plug on the Nerve Gear I'm wearing the moment they discovered me linked up to the game in my cupboard under the stairs."

Harry didn't notice that Kirito had a horrified look on his face due to Harry's declaration or that Agil's expression was mostly filled with concern, more than a little sadness, and barely suppressed anger; the nine year old far too occupied with his inner turmoil.

"That's why I came here in the first place. During the beta test this world became my home. I was free here. Now… now this place scares me. As bad as my relatives are, they never hurt me. This game… this stupid, cruel game made me bleed," Harry continued hoarsely as he pushed up his ruined left sleeve to bare the numerous gashes that had been left by the crows as tears began sliding down his face once more. "Why? Why did their attacks hurt so much? Why did the crows suddenly make me bleed when they attacked me this time? What is wrong with me!?"

The other two players said nothing because they had no answers.

After a moment, Harry scrubbed at his face with his hands and uncaringly smeared blood, snot, and tears all over his face. He didn't know why he was crying at the drop of a hat just because he was suddenly wearing an avatar that looked like his real body; he'd stopped crying years ago. Though, in truth, he'd been having trouble hiding his emotions ever since he'd started playing Ken no Sekai because he'd been happy living in Aincrad and exploring the various wonders that could be found in the many dungeons. Only now there was nothing to be happy about; now the game he'd thought of as home had turned on him in the blink of an eye and it had hurt him.

As he sat shivering on the frozen ground beneath the nesting tree of a flock of Carrion Crows, Harry finally understood that he wasn't just playing some silly game. In that moment, the last of Harry's innocence was shattered as he realized that the rest of the world could be far crueler than his relatives ever had been.

It was not a happy revelation and Harry shook beneath the magnitude of negative emotions that swept through him as a result of his eyes being forcefully torn open. He let out a half strangled keening whine as he reached up and tangled his fingers in his hair only to cut it off the moment he heard the crunch of shifting ice and snow; a sharp reminder that he was not alone. Fear of being punished for daring to show any emotions (the Dursley's rules still deeply ingrained within his psyche) had him scrambling up onto his feet despite his pain as he slammed a mental door down on his inner turmoil and wiped his face of all emotion.

Once he was certain he was in control of himself, Harry glanced up and flicked his eyes between the two older players before he submissively dropped his gaze back to the ground and held himself stiffly as he waited for one of the others to say something about his lack of control. He also suspected that he'd be yelled at by his friend any minute for his earlier fits when he'd tried to run away and for basically lying about his age all this time. And while his relatives had avoided touching him in general, his aunt and uncle hadn't been afraid to administer the occasional disciplinary slap when he broke the rules or did something they disapproved of.

So when he heard the snow crunch again and saw Agil's shadow move into his line of sight, he braced himself for the expected blow.

The nine year old was in no way prepared when Agil stopped right in front of him and wrapped him in his arms instead. Utterly confused and completely unused and uncomfortable with prolonged physical contact, Harry tensed up and stopped breathing as he tried to figure out what the hell was happening. They stood like that for several minutes before Harry worked up the courage to ask what was happening.

"Agil…? What are you doing?"

"What do you mean, what am I doing, _gaki_? I'm giving you a hug, what does it look like I'm doing?"

"Oh. I didn't know hugs felt so nice. I've never had one before and every time I saw my cousin get one he'd whine, complain, and fight my aunt so I thought they hurt," Harry confessed as he gradually relaxed and leaned into the man's embrace, pressing his face into Agil's stomach while his hands rose up of their own accord to grab hold of the dark gray coverall's that the man wore. The nine year old would later deny he snuggled with Agil whenever his first hug was mentioned in his hearing; he was a grown boy, after all, and grown boys don't snuggle.

"_We should head back into town now_," Kirito suggested in Japanese after several minutes had passed. "_The Carrion Crows are regenerating rapidly and they will soon have enough numbers to mob us a second time. On top of that, the sun has already begun to set; meaning we'll have Ravenous Wolves to deal with on top of the thieving birds._"

"_Right, hold on, gaki; I'm going to use a Transport Crystal to take us directly back to Hajimari no Machi._"

As the blue pillar of teleport magic wrapped around Harry and Agil, Harry's magic (what little of it remained) reached out to identify the gaming code that was wrapping itself around his soul (delaying their arrival by fifteen seconds). By the time they reappeared at the Gate Plaza in Hajimari no Machi, his magic had incorporated the new 'spell' into limited repertoire of spells. That brought his official Spell Count up to nine; four Trap Spells (all variations of the Snare Trap that he'd used the night he hid in the stump), digging (from when he'd cleared out the stump), Dirt to Wall (also from his stint in the stump), Sprint (his mad dash out of the forest), the Sphere Blast (the attack that had killed the crows), and Teleport (the ability to move himself between any two locations).

Harry still didn't know anything about his magic though and would therefore not learn about the new spells he'd gained until much later in the game.

"_What happened, Agil?_" Kirito demanded worriedly as he rushed up to the pair of them. "_I expected you to already be here because the two of you'd left nearly a full minute before I did._"

"_Just the usual lag from Teleporting two people with one Crystal,_" Agil replied with a shrug of his shoulder; the older man just as clueless about Harry's magic as Harry.

Harry glanced up sharply at the teen's question as he recalled the delays he'd experienced when trying to use his Skills and had feared that the delay in their arrival had been caused by him right up until Agil brought up the time delay caused by multiple passengers using a single Teleport Crystal. He let out a soft sigh of relief that the delay hadn't been his fault (at least not completely) before he reluctantly stepped out of Agil's arms now that they'd arrived back in the city. He tried not to grow depressed over the sudden loss of warmth that brief period of human contact had provided (simulated though it was) as he shivered in the artificial winter wind that swept through the Gate Plaza.

Wrapping his arms around his stomach in a pathetic attempt to ward off the chill, he took another step away from his friend only for his legs to buckle on him due to his exhaustion; his new HP Bar (which was actually a Magic Point or MP Bar) still sitting dangerously low. Before he hit the ground, Agil swept him up in his arms and, for the second time in a single hour, Harry was shocked and confused over the fact that the man was willing to touch him; he clearly recalled how much his family had abhorred the mere thought of touching him (disciplinary slaps aside).

It was decidedly awkward to find himself being carried by his friend as Agil made his way to the upstairs apartment that sat above the small shop the man had recently purchased; Harry completely uncertain as to how he should feel about the continued contact since he'd lived almost his entire life without it. On one hand, it was warm and reassuring. On the other hand, he was highly uncomfortable with allowing another person to invade his personal space. By the time they reached Agil's apartment, Harry had given up trying to figure it out and had simply relaxed into the warmth; the nine year old half asleep in Agil's arms (and he was still _not_ snuggling).

Harry lifted his head off of Agil's shoulder out of curiosity as they entered the apartment; in all the time he'd known the friendly merchant, he'd never been invited into the man's apartment (then again, Agil hadn't had the place very long and Harry had rarely stuck around for long when he visited). Unsurprisingly, the apartment looked much like the shop below; with weapons, armor, tools, and materials stacked haphazardly throughout the entire flat.

Harry couldn't help but snicker over the mess because it explained why Agil often had trouble finding anything. At the same time, Harry's fingers itched to organize the mess; the long years spent as the Dursleys' personal maid had made an impression upon his young mind and meant that he didn't like messes since he always got punished for them even though he never made them.

"_Excuse the clutter, I haven't made time to finish moving the merchandise and materials downstairs into the shop or finish unpacking,_" Agil implored as he waded through the messes towards the bathroom with Harry still held in his arms.

"_Uh-huh, that's probably because your shop is ten times worse than your apartment,_" Kirito drolly pointed out as he smirked at the older man.

"_Not my fault so many players come to me to trade and sell their extra Items,_" Agil fired right back over his shoulder as he set the nine year old back on his feet before giving him a gentle push inside of the bathroom. "_Go take a shower and clean yourself up, James; it should help you feel better._"

"_Ah, so it has nothing to do with the fact that you dump things in the first spot you come across and promptly forget about them?_" Kirito's voice called back from the other room.

Harry snickered softly over the good natured bickering between the two older players as Agil shut the door behind him to give him some privacy. His amusement didn't last long though as he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. He looked terrible; his shirt had been ruined and was soaked with blood, his pants were filthy, his hair was a tangled mess (though that was normal), his arms were streaked with fresh and drying blood, and his face was smeared with blood, snot, and dirt. Swallowing thickly, he turned away from his reflection and turned on the water to the shower before he used the Menu to un-equip his clothes out of habit; never noticing as his magic flared around him once again.

Once he stepped beneath the stream of hot water, Harry sighed softly as he reveled in the feel of actual water pouring over him, the sensation far more realistic than he'd expected; including the stinging of the numerous cuts that littered his arms, back, and neck from where the crows had hurt him with their claws and beaks. He soon closed his eyes, leaned up against the wall, and slowly relaxed as the warm water washed over him. He probably would have fallen asleep standing up if not for Agil knocking on the door and asking him if he was almost finished some twenty minutes later.

Regretfully, Harry fumbled for the bar of soap in the shower and quickly washed himself before he rinsed off the suds, turned off the water, and stepped out of the shower. He then quickly opened his Inventory to equip himself with an older set of clothes that he had intended to sell without bothering to dry off and never noticed that his hair was still dripping water or that his clothes clung to his damp body.

He intentionally avoided looking at his reflection again as he shuffled over to the door and opened it just wide enough so he could stick his head out into the hallway. When he didn't see anyone waiting for him, he tentatively slipped out into the hallway and warily made his way back to the living room.

"_Ah, good, you are finished,_" Agil proclaimed as he exited one of the bedrooms, walked up behind Harry, and scooped the nine year old back up into his arms.

Harry stiffened and bit off a startled yelp over the unexpectedness of being swept off his feet and held once again. He relaxed a minute later when the man simply carried him the rest of the way down the hall, through the living room, and into the dining room. Agil then shifted Harry into one arm while he used his free hand to clear off a chair that he soon deposited the nine year old onto. Harry blinked up at the man in confusion when he reached out and ruffled Harry's still wet hair before he left the room.

Uncertain about what was going to happen to him now, Harry pulled his feet up into the chair with him, wrapped his arms around his legs, and propped his chin on his knees as he let his eyes wander about the room. He was starting to drift off once more when he suddenly found Kirito kneeling in front of him holding a jar that was labeled as healing cream and a roll of gauze. The two of them had a short staring contest; Kirito thinking it obvious what he wanted and Harry not having a clue as to what the teen planned to do. The contest ended when Agil returned to the room and started laughing at the two of them.

"_James, Kirito has agreed to treat your injuries in order to stop the bleeding,_" Agil explained as both boys automatically turned to frown at the adult in response to the laughter. "_Kirito, James has repeatedly refused to learn how to read minds; you have to explain to him exactly what it is you want. Trust me, I speak from experience and the gaki has a stubborn streak a mile wide when the mood strikes him._"

"_I'm not stubborn,_" Harry countered automatically as he frowned at the grinning man. "_I just don't like people bossing me about; I got that enough from my relatives._"

"_I rest my case._"

Kirito smothered a laugh when Harry scowled (more like pouted) in response to Agil's retort. After a few minutes, the teen managed to get his amusement under control before he stated, "_Agil informed me that you don't have Healing as one of your acquired Game Skills. However, I do, so he asked me to tend to your injuries since it would be less effective if you tried to do it yourself. In order for me to do that, I need for you to take off your shirt and grant me permission to treat you through the game Menu. I figured I could treat you right here since we don't really know each other and I didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable by dragging you off to another room. Will that be alright with you, James?_"

Harry tipped his head to one side and considered the teen before glancing at Agil who was watching the both of them as he cleared off and set the dining room table so they could eat. He then glanced down at his arms and let his eyes flick over the numerous blood stains that were blooming across the tan sleeves of his shirt; a stark reminder that his injuries had not stopped bleeding. A quick check of the golden bar hovering above his head had him flinching when he realized that it was still dangerously low and he wondered if that was because he was bleeding or if he was still bleeding because it was so low. Shivering, Harry reached up to open the Menu to take off the shirt he'd just put on.

If either of the other players were startled by how thin and frail Harry looked without his shirt or the fact that he had quite a few nasty looking bruises (that he'd gotten when he'd fallen out of the tree), they didn't mention it in Harry's presence.

Over the course of the next hour, Harry grew increasingly uncomfortable as he watched Kirito grow frustrated as the first aide Items he was using to treat Harry's injuries briefly stopped functioning the moment they came into contact with his body before they suddenly reengaged; Harry's magic briefly shorting out the game code running the Items each time they were used as it continuously failed to assimilate the coding into a new spell due to the fact that it wasn't Harry using the Items. If not for that anomaly, it would have only taken between five and ten minutes to dress the multitude of wounds Harry had acquired from the Carrion Crows.

Not long after his injuries had been properly treated, Agil brought out three plates of food for the three of them. The earlier anomaly Harry had noticed with the apple he'd eaten cropped up once more when he hesitantly began to eat from the plate Agil had set before him. The food would take on the characteristics of real food the moment the food came into contact with his hands or with the utensil he was holding and Harry got the distinct impression that Kirito was jealous of him for that.

Harry wouldn't have blamed him if he was; after six weeks of just going through the motions of eating, the concept of eating a real meal was heaven. Not wanting the teen to hate him, Harry tried to share the altered food but the moment he let go of it, the food would return to the standard in game fare and he blushed bright red when Kirito teasingly accused him of playing a prank on him.

Once all three of them had finished eating some twenty minutes later, Agil propped his elbows on the table as he laced his fingers together and penned Harry with a serious gaze from across the table as he asked, "_What are you going to do now, James?_"

"_What do you mean?_"

"_What do you plan to do now that you no longer have an adult avatar to hide behind? You do realize that you will not be able to travel as freely as you once did, right? Very few adult players are going to be willing to allow a child your age out into the dungeons; especially not alone._"

"_I… I don't know. There's something wrong with me; none of my traps were working right and everything acts all funny when I try to use any Items. It's like all my Game Skills were messed up by the same glitch that took away my avatar. I'm scared that I'll be useless now because I can't use those Skills but I don't want to have to depend on someone else for food and things though. And I don't care what anyone else says or thinks; I won't let anyone lock me up again._"

"_If you give me a day or two, I will see if I can't find some way to help you stay independent,_" Agil declared after he spent a couple of minutes considering the matter; an unfamiliar emotion darkening his eyes. Harry canted his head to one side as he met the man's gaze while he tried to figure out what his friend was thinking before he shrugged his shoulder to indicate it didn't matter to him.

Agil smiled in response (a smile that looked slightly pained in Harry's opinion – as if the man had expected a different answer and was disappointed that he didn't get it) before he grew serious once more as he brought up the next topic of discussion, "_In one of your messages, you mentioned that there was something you couldn't fix. Were you talking about the fact that you no longer have your avatar, the fact that you received lifelike injuries, or did it have to do with the problems you just mentioned with your in-game Skills?_"

"_Those were all part of it_," Harry replied hesitantly as he dropped his gaze to the table and recalled everything that had happened after he'd reached level thirty.

There was his new classification as an Indefinable Immortal Object and the System Error that claimed that his HP was now incalculable. Then there were the changes that had happened to his HP Bar, the loss of his avatar, and the delays that now happened each time he tried to use his in Game Skills. On top of that, there was the sheer agony he'd felt during the strange glitch, the injuries he'd received both times the crows had attacked him, and worst of all the way his body had shattered over and over again for what had felt like hours.

Just thinking about everything that had happened to him over the last few days brought back all of his earlier turmoil and he trembled beneath the weight of the renewed fear that it could happen again.

"_That isn't all that is bothering you, is it?_" Kirito inquired as if he'd read Harry's mind.

Harry winced and shrank in on himself; his body language effectively answering Kirito's question. He then shot a nervous glance up towards the virtually unchanged status of his HP Bar before he quickly dropped his gaze back down to the table and wrapped one arm around his abdomen in hopes that it would ease the knots that had formed in his stomach.

"_James?_" Agil prompted.

Harry scrunched up his shoulders and bowed his head further. The sound of a chair scraping backwards made Harry think that he'd chased his friend off and he brought his legs back up onto the chair, wrapped both arms around his legs to make himself as small as possible, and pressed his face against his knees in order to hold back the tears that had once again filled his eyes. When a large hand settled on his head he jerked his head sideways and up at the unexpected contact and soon found himself face to face with Agil, who had merely walked around the table to crouch beside his chair.

"_I can't help you if you don't tell me what is wrong,_" Agil murmured as he replaced his hand on Harry's head.

"_I'm scared it will happen again. It felt like I was being ripped apart over and over again and after it was over I was different and I don't know how to put it back to how it was before._"

"_What do you mean by different? Are you referring to the loss of your avatar?_"

"_No, losing my avatar scared me because I was afraid you'd be angry with me and hate me and never want anything to do with me anymore because I'd lied to you. The other thing… the other thing frightens me more. I'm scared of what it means and what will happen to me now because of it._"

"_What is it that frightens you?_"

Instead of giving a verbal reply this time, Harry reached up with his right hand and opened his Menu again, his hand trembling like a furless cat stuck out in the snow. He let his fingers hover hesitantly over the option to view his Player Stats for a long minute as he mentally debated on the wisdom of showing anyone his Stats. Agil's hand dropped down to rub his back and Harry tensed for a moment before slowly relaxing as the warmth of the continued contact soothed some of his fears. After another minute, Harry opened the Stat Page for Agil to see; silently hoping that his friend could tell him that his new classification was nothing to worry about.

"_Classification: Indefinable Immortal Object, Total HP: System Error, HP Incalculable,_" Agil read aloud as his hand paused on Harry's back for a split second before resuming the soothing circular motion. "_That is strange; I did not think a player's classification as a Human Player could change. I was also unaware that there were Immortal Objects within the game but it makes sense that there would be. The incalculable HP is a little concerning but that is most likely related to your new classification in some way and so probably not as bad as it sounds. Kirito, you've spent quite a bit of the last six weeks on the front line and you were a beta tester; have you ever run across any immortal beings within the game?_"

"_No, but that doesn't mean that there aren't some out there. If I see or hear anything as I move on up through the floors, I'll be sure to contact you and pass on whatever information I learn though. There is also a chance that James's new classification is nothing more than a system glitch that will fix itself in a day or two._"

"_Players and monsters shatter when they die in the game and all Items shatter when they expire or get damaged beyond repair,_" Harry interjected weakly, his voice thick with emotion. "_I was shattering over and over again for hours. I kept dying over and over again for hours but I'm still here. The first time the Carrion Crows attacked me while I was sitting up in the branches of the tree, my HP Level never went down no matter how many times they struck me; not even when I fell out of the tree. I don't know why it went down the second time. I thought maybe it went down because I was bleeding so much but I don't really know._"

"_James…?_"

"_I'm scared, Agil. What if… what if I don't really exist any more? What if I'm nothing but a memory that was left behind because my body died? My aunt and uncle hate me! They wouldn't have lifted a finger to help me. What if they just locked my body in my cupboard under the stairs and left me there to die like they always threatened to do? No one cares about me there and they wouldn't have bothered taking me to the hospital because they never wanted anyone to know that I lived with them or that I was related to them._"

"_What about your school teachers?_" Kirito asked logically in a voice laced with tension.

"_They all ignored me. They never called on me during class and even the other kids ignored me. The only reason I was even allowed to go to school in the first place was because it meant that they wouldn't have to feed me breakfast or lunch during the day and because my aunt hated seeing my face all the time._"

Neither Kirito nor Agil responded verbally to that declaration. Instead, Harry found himself being lifted up into Agil's arms once more. Harry curled up against his friend's chest shortly after the man had sat down in Harry's chair and settled the nine year old on his lap; the distraught nine year old promptly crying himself to sleep as he was once more overwhelmed by everything that had happened to him. This time not even Harry would be able to deny the fact that he'd snuggled into Agil's embrace (the young wizard desperately craving the comfort that he'd been denied for so long); not that he'd ever admit to that out loud.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Hajimari no Machi – Starting City or Town of Beginnings  
Ken no Sekai – Sword Art Online

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
Experience Points – the points earned for each quest completed and each monster killed  
FullDive – the use of technology to fully immerse one's conscience in a virtual reality  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
Mod – short for moderator  
Nerve Gear – equipment created by Kayaba Akihiko (Argus); allows the user to enter FullDive  
NERDLES – **Ner**ve **D**irect **L**inkage **E**nvironment **S**ystem (a surgically implanted chip that allows the FullDive system to interface with the brain – the surgically implanted part may or may not be canon as it was something I thought seemed more logical than it just being part of the interface helmet)  
Player Stats – A list of a player's in game statistics and skills  
Skill Points – Experience points that are applied towards mastery of an in game skill

* * *

**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	6. Discussions

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Six: Discussions

_Wednesday, December 24, 2019 9:42 PM_

Kirito stared numbly after Agil's form as the older man carried the now sleeping kid to the bedroom he'd cleaned up earlier so he could tuck him into bed. The fourteen year old was having difficulty wrapping his mind around everything he'd seen and heard from the moment Agil had asked for his help in locating his friend four days earlier. Kirito would have helped no matter what because he owed Agil a favor and he would not have wanted the guilt of another's death on his shoulders but when he heard that it was Tracker James that was missing, he'd dropped everything else to lend a hand.

The name Tracker James had become fairly well known before the beta test ended and it had been bantered about in the pubs from around the end of the second week after the launch of the official version. Kirito had never personally met the man but he had heard of his prowess in Tracking, Trapping, and Treasure Hunting from many different sources. Rumors had said the guy could track and catch anything that was not a Boss Monster and that he could find any Item, Ingredient, or raw material with nothing more than half a fact.

Most of the rumors were, without a doubt, exaggerations but they all hinted at the fact that the man was a highly skilled player. He was also known to be friendly if shy and prone to long silences, completely honest, and usually willing to help others. Three traits that ensured he got along with most of the other players that crossed paths with him even if he was considered something of a recluse; that was especially true after everyone had been trapped within the game six weeks earlier.

Very few people have had anything bad to say about Tracker James and those that did were often the ones that had tried to cheat the man after hiring him to find an Item. According to what he'd heard, the man wasn't much of a fighter and tended to solve the conflicts he had with other players with creative and humiliating pranks made from traps that could be used within a town because they were harmless.

So Kirito had jumped at the chance to meet Tracker James since very few people knew how to find or track the man out in the dungeons and fields (rumors said the man rarely ventured into any of the various towns). He hadn't even known Agil was a friend of the hermit-like tracker until the black man had sought his help in finding the missing man. When he'd first heard what had happened in the forest from one of the Guild Members that had last seen Tracker James, he was certain that the man was dead; which Kirito thought was a real shame since the man's skills were useful and because any deaths were tragic within the deadly game they'd been trapped inside.

It wasn't until Agil revealed that James's name was still active on his Friend List that he reconsidered his belief that the man had died. Kirito had tried to confirm the man's status among the living by taking a trip to the Monument of Life but all he had found was a blank section of stone where the man's name should have appeared. But a lack of name did not equate death since those that died had had their names crossed out with a line and the date and cause of death listed beside their name on the monument. It was a confusing puzzle.

A mere eight hours after the incident, the Guild Leader that Tracker James had been working for on his last job led Kirito and Agil into the part of the forest where the group had faced a large pack of Furgrin and a minor Boss Monster. The man had then apologized again to Agil (for abandoning James in a moment of weakness – the man had been both terrified and horrified over what had happened and feared he and his Guild would be struck next) before leaving. Kirito wasted no time in picking up James's trail from the Furgrin clearing and followed it to where the final trap had been activated to finish off the last of the minions while the Guild fought the boss.

The tracks around that half dismantled trap had been confusing; it looked as if James had been rolling and thrashing about all over the clearing for several more hours. The weirdest part had been the smaller set of tracks that walked away from the area; tracks which were also the only tracks leaving the area. Kirito and Agil had followed those tracks through the forest to a small clearing where they led straight to an old stump in the middle of the clearing before they disappeared completely; stopping only to deal with the various monsters that attacked them (including a large pack of Ravenous Wolves that had attacked them just before they reached the stump clearing).

The trail appeared to have been obliterated by the tracks of the Wolves and it almost looked as if the Wolves had killed whatever or whoever it was that they had been following. There were a couple of discarded traps lying about the stump but no sign of whoever it was that had set them up. A short search of the stump and the clearing revealed no hidden hiding places or new trails and Agil had sunk his axe into the stump in frustration.

When they found no new clues after searching the area several times, Kirito and Agil had left the forest to check the small handful of places that James frequented when he deigned to visit the various towns on the off-chance that James had found his way out of the minor Dungeon. He hadn't or if he had, he'd gone to ground in yet another Dungeon. The two of them returned to the forest just after sunrise and continued searching for any clue as to where James had gone.

Using a spiral search pattern, they'd moved out into the forest beyond the clearing with the stump on the off chance that the man had taken to the trees in order to escape the clearing to prevent the nighttime predators from picking up his trail. In the back of his mind, Kirito also began wondering if maybe the smaller footprints meant that some monster had finished the man off and then left but James's name was still active on Agil's Friend List (even if the locater function that let a person find their friends through the Map was not working for some reason).

He knew that without asking because the dark skinned man had unfailingly sent James another message once an hour in the hopes that James would respond to one of them. The longer Tracker James remained silent the more worried and desperate Agil had grown. The merchant had even started to get angry by the second day of the search though there was also true fear beneath the anger since James apparently had no reason to ignore Agil; which meant he was incapable of replying for some reason.

It was late afternoon on the third day of the search when Agil finally got a reply; firm evidence that James was still alive. The older man had let out a sigh of relief and flashed a grin at Kirito before responding to the reply. Kirito had spent the next five minutes watching Agil grow increasingly frustrated as James had stubbornly refused to cooperate and let them know where he was. He'd then started cursing as James ignored the next handful of messages and Kirito had resumed his efforts to pick up James's trail in order to give the irritated man some space.

Agil had gone from frustrated and angry to fearful just a couple of hours later when James finally gave in and sent another reply. Kirito could still recall the abject horror on Agil's face when the man had glanced up at Kirito after reading through the note and revealed that James had just sent him what amounted to a suicide note. The fourteen year old had been stunned that a man he'd respected (due to his reputation alone, since he'd never met the man) could be broken in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

Kirito had then grown nervous at the thought that there might be something truly frightening out there that Tracker James had stumbled upon and if it broke the man rumored to tackle hoards of monsters with nothing more than a cheap dagger and an arsenal of mere traps, then what chance did a boy like him have against it even with a sword?

Agil didn't seem to care about anything except for getting to his friend in time to prevent him from taking his own life and once Agil had gotten the general location of his friend the two of them had taken off at a dead run with Agil passing on the news that his friend had ended up trapped beneath the nesting tree of a flock of Carrion Crows. As Kirito ran beside the taller man, he mentally ran through every possible attack in his repertoire and tried to recall whether or not the Carrion Crows had a Boss Monster. He prayed that he had leveled up enough to at least hold his own against whatever monster the other man had stumbled upon aside from the crows long enough for Agil to teleport James out before any of them died.

Out of all the possible scenarios that he'd feared they were running into, Kirito never expected to find a frightened child beleaguered by a the largest flock of Carrion Crows he'd ever run into at the end of the trail. Apparently, that hadn't been what Agil was expecting either given the shocked expression he'd seen on the older man's face at the time.

There'd been almost no time to analyze the situation once they got within seven yards of the tree due to the entire flock of Carrion Crows mobbing them from above. The viciousness of the attack had taken Kirito's breath away as both he and Agil desperately fought to reach the kid who'd been buried beneath the largest group of flying monsters (no easy feat due to the fact that an ill-timed attack could kill the person they were trying to save). The battle had ended abruptly about ten minutes after it started when the kid had used a strange wide ranged attack that had taken out all of the remaining crows in a single move.

Agil and Kirito had both moved closer at that point in order to better protect the kid if the crows returned and Kirito was only half surprised to see the kid startle and bolt when Agil's shadow had fallen on him; the kid had obviously feared he was being attacked again. When the child confirmed that he was indeed Tracker James, Kirito had been more than a little shocked as he couldn't imagine a child earning Tracker James's reputation. He temporarily forgot all about age and reputation the moment he'd seen the _bloodstains_ on the ruined clothes that James was wearing in addition to the blood he could see running in rivulets from the very realistic looking injuries that the kid was covered in.

Wanting to get a closer look, Kirito had made to grab the kid's arm only to freeze when the kid practically bolted in order to avoid the touch. Kirito just figured the kid was still rather skittish after the recent brutal encounter with the crows and simply backed up and sat down as he introduced himself in hopes that it would put the kid at ease. He was a bit disappointed when the kid hadn't responded in kind but figured the kid would get around to it eventually when he wasn't so shaken and it wasn't like Kirito really needed an introduction after Agil had confirmed that the child was indeed his missing friend.

The short question and answer session that had followed had been more than a little bizarre.

Kirito had been impressed with the kid's cunningness and luck in keeping his true appearance and age from being discovered like everyone else's had on the opening day of the game. Finding out that the kid had only had a limited understanding of Japanese at the time (the only language the game had been released in as far as he knew) gave new insight to Tracker James's apparent shyness. The kid had obviously wished to avoid drawing attention to himself by openly advertising the fact that he didn't know the language (something that would have had every single crook in the game targeting the poor kid).

That he'd still managed to muddle through the game (both the beta and live version) as long as he had without a firm grasp of the language was an impressive feat in and of itself since you needed to understand the language to use the Menu and interact with the other players and the computer generated characters.

Listening to James explain part of what had happened to him hadn't really shed any light on the mystery of why his avatar had been reverted to his actual appearance so late in the game. What it had done was confuse the hell out of Kirito because the kid claimed that he'd felt pain; something that should not have been possible within the game due to the way that the Nerve Gear functioned. Then again, it should not have been possible for someone to bleed and the kid was without a doubt bleeding at the time (something Kirito wouldn't have believed possible if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes).

Learning that the kid was only nine, had sort of stolen his gaming equipment, and was actually able to connect to the game using an improperly implanted NERDLES had been mind boggling. Hearing James talk about how no one would care that he'd been trapped in the death game with everyone else had been disturbing. The revelation that the nine year old had been orphaned in a car crash at infancy and ended up in the care of his aunt and uncle had been surreal; since that was exactly what had happened to Kirito. The implications and hints that James's guardians, his _relatives_, were abusing him were enough to make Kirito sick.

James's emotional break down after confessing his reasons for playing the game had made Kirito feel more than a little guilty over his inability to answer the kid's borderline hysterical demands to know what had happened to him. It might have been unreasonable for him to feel that way but he hadn't been able to help himself at the time due to how horrible the kid had looked covered in his own blood and how broken he'd sounded. Watching the kid totally shut off his emotions in the blink of an eye before falling into a defensively submissive stance the moment Agil had stood up and approached the kid had made his skin crawl; that kind of reaction was _not_ normal.

Kirito hadn't known what to think or feel after he had seen and heard James's reaction to being hugged by Agil. The startling confession that he'd never been hugged before and had actually thought hugs hurt had made Kirito pity the younger boy as he himself had many fond memories of his foster parents hugging him in his younger years. He couldn't imagine what it must have been like to never receive a hug when he got home from school, when he did something that made his parents proud, when he was feeling sad or scared, or at night when his parents tucked him into bed.

Kirito had felt guilty for interrupting that moment but they weren't exactly in the safest of places and the Carrion Crows had been regenerating steadily during the entire conversation.

Things had only gotten weirder once they'd returned to Agil's apartment. The odd anomalies that occurred around the kid had been more than a little troubling and difficult to believe but he'd seen the evidence with his own eyes. The way the kid's hair had still been dripping wet after his shower and how the damp spots on his shirt had grown larger with each drop that fell from his hair (something that shouldn't have been possible). The fact that his injuries hadn't stopped bleeding as fresh bloodstains blossomed across the clean shirt he'd changed into. The way the first aide supplies seemed to temporarily fail each time he treated another of the kid's numerous bleeding wounds.

And then the thing with the food; oh how he'd been jealous when he'd watched the kid slice his bread roll in half and properly smear butter and jam on both sides before devouring the food. The way the jam had smeared across the kid's face hadn't helped and Kirito almost hated the kid in that instant. James had no doubt sensed Kirito's growing emotional conflict because the kid had tried to share the food only for it to revert to the game standard fare the moment he let go of it after handing it to Kirito. The unselfish gesture had actually helped Kirito push the jealousy aside and allowed him to laugh it off as he teasingly accused the kid of pranking him with the food.

The brief moment of levity hadn't lasted beyond the meal however; James had grown depressed and frightened the instant Agil had started the next round of questioning. That entire discussion had left a bad taste in Kirito's mouth. He had seen right through James's attempt at skirting around the truth of what had really been bothering him (the kid had used a tactic that Kirito often used himself by admitting to a partial truth but his failure to completely hide his emotions had given him away). For the second time that day, Kirito had been blindsided by a situation that he had not been expecting.

The first time had been when he learned that the man know as Tracker James was in actuality a _nine_ year old boy.

He had first thought the kid's new classification and HP issues were just part of a weird system glitch that would fix itself in time right up until the kid had spoken again of shattering repeatedly; something the members of the Guild that had last seen Tracker James had described in great detail with obvious horror several days earlier. That alone was troubling but what had really bothered Kirito was the child's terrified worries that his aunt and uncle had not seen to it that his body was taken to the hospital so that he didn't die while trapped in the game.

Something that the teen feared had been confirmed in a round about way due to the painfully thin appearance of the kid after he'd removed his shirt. The bruises that had been revealed at the same time were yet another indication of a less than pleasant home life – the teen unaware that the younger boy had gotten them when he'd fallen out of the tree.

To hear the kid state with conviction that there was _no one_ who would be concerned if he disappeared off the face of the earth had made Kirito depressed. To be told that the only reasons the kid had been allowed to attend school was so his caregivers wouldn't have to feed him or see him for several hours per day had Kirito feeling like he was going to vomit (an action that he was thankful the game couldn't simulate – unaware that James had bypassed that feature as well). Sure, the kid claimed his aunt and uncle never beat him but if they were willing to torment him mentally and emotionally, then what was stopping them from lashing out psychically at the boy?

The bruises again being glaringly obvious.

"_When I get out of this game, I'm going to hunt down those bastards and give them a piece of my mind,_" Agil growled when he stalked back into the room, dropped down heavily into his chair, and scowled at the table. "_And I'm going to punctuate each word with my fist!_"

"_I'll help,_" Kirito offered with a scowl of his own as he briefly glanced towards the bedrooms before turning back to face the older man. "_What are you going to do in the mean time?_"

"_Help the gaki survive the game._"

"_He should have never been in the game in the first place._"

"_Doesn't change the fact that he's here now,_" Agil retorted with a frustrated sigh as he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. "_I always knew that he wasn't as old as he appeared to be but after believing that everyone had been unmasked on Opening Day, I didn't once think he was quite that young. It certainly explains some of his more puzzling reactions to various situations; such as the look of pure disgust on his face the first time I ordered him a mug of ale at the Hunter's Pub and Inn. Or his reaction when I asked him if he had a girlfriend. It also explains why he never came right out and told me his age._"

"_I've never had it in real life so I don't know if it's normal but the alcohol they serve in the game is pretty gross until you get used to the taste,_" Kirito pointed out with a tight grin and a forced laugh. "_I still avoid ordering any unless there is nothing else available._"

"_It's no different on the outside,_" Agil confirmed with a strained laugh of his own. He grew serious again when he leaned forward and addressed Kirito. "_I want to thank you for helping me find James. I hate to think what might have happened to him if we'd not gotten to him when we did. As far as I'm concerned, you've more than paid me back for the favor you owed me and I'm back to owing you another favor instead._"

"_No, you don't owe me anything; I wasn't really all that much to help, seeing as how I lost his trail that first night. If anything, I now owe you two favors for failing you,_" Kirito countered with a shake of his head; the fourteen year old still frustrated over the fact that he'd not been able to find James that first day like he'd originally expected to (the teen had been far too overconfident in his Game Skills – not that he was going to admit that aloud).

"_Well, if you really feel that way, then maybe you could help me out with something._"

"_Oh? What did you have in mind?_"

"_When I was looking at James's Player Stats earlier, I noticed that he had three unfilled Skill Slots; one of which I imagine he would have gained when he reached level thirty. I don't know if he was holding off on filling them because he hadn't decided what Skill he wanted to learn next or if he was simply waiting until he mastered the first ten; though how he ended up with an extra four Skill Slots is a complete mystery, since as far as I know, everyone started out with six Skill Slots at the start of the game._"

"_Do you think the extra slots might have something to do with the same glitch that changed his classification and messed up his HP Count?_"

"_I doubt it; the numbers don't match since he has ten slots filled and all ten of those Skills have at least six hundred Skill Points – meaning that he's been working on mastering them for a while now._"

"_As weird as that is, what does the number of Skill Slots that James has have to do with the favor you wanted?_"

"_I'd like your help in teaching James a couple of fighting skills. I'd teach him myself but he isn't strong enough or tall enough to handle a two handed axe; which is what I wield for a weapon. What he needs to learn is a bit of sword work; something you are very good at._"

"_What Attack Skills does he currently have?_"

"_None._"

Surprised over the unexpected answer, Kirito furrowed his brow in confusion as he demanded, "_Wait a minute, are you telling me he doesn't have any fighting skills at all? Are you sure? How has he survived all this time, let alone reached level thirty already, if he didn't have any fighting skills?_"

"_All of his Equipped Skills are geared towards trapping and evading, I checked to see what Skills he had while he had his Stats Page open earlier. He completely mastered Tracking and Trapping and is close to mastering Night Vision, Sprint, and Searching; he needs less than two hundred more Skill Points in those categories to gain mastery. The other five Skills he has are Detection, Fishing, Hiding, Listening, and Acrobatics and all of them are over halfway mastered._"

"_Until seeing his Stats for myself, I'd thought he'd been hiding at least one Attack Skill. Even his Unequipped Skills are geared towards his chosen occupation (Escape, Navigation, Scouting, Camping, and Research) and out of those Skills he's already mastered Escape and Camping with Scouting fairly high as well. As for how he survived and managed to level up so quickly; he spent ninety_ _percent of his time out in the dungeons trapping monsters. He was damn good at it too._"

"_I went with him on a hunt once about two weeks ago; to track a large pack of level nineteen Ravenous Wolves that had somehow made their way to the first floor. He found their den, set up a single trap, and the moment the sun had set we lured them straight to his trap. I killed two while the other five died when they fell into the Pit Trap he'd set up. That he is questioning the Skills he has diligently honed for the last six weeks bothers me greatly; especially when you take into consideration that the traps he uses are game generated based upon his actions._"

"_Alright, say I agree to try and teach him a few things; are you sure he'll be willing to learn? Will the standard attacks still work once he takes hold of a sword?_" Kirito asked after he gave the older man's request serious consideration. "_I know you saw what happened when I dealt with his injuries. I had to fight against some kind of barrier in order to treat and bandage his injuries and the fact that there was a significant delay before the Items actually did their job would spell death if that happened when he was using a sword while in a fight. Logically, based upon what we learned tonight, the same thing will happen when he picks up a sword._"

"_That doesn't change the fact that he's going to need a way to defend himself; I can't keep him locked up inside of my apartment indefinitely and I doubt I could force him to stay inside the town for long either,_" Agil pointed out tiredly as he ran a hand over his face. "_I think he'd be willing enough to learn if the idea is presented to him in such a way that he won't think we're trying to take his choices away from him._"

"_As for the various anomalies that keep cropping up around the gaki and the chances that they'll also affect any Sword Skills he learns…? I don't know. It's just one more thing we're going to have to figure out as we go. Hopefully, if the glitch affects any weapons he picks up, it will affect them much like it affect his food tonight; making it behave more realistically rather than having the blade's attacks lag behind by ten or fifteen seconds any time he tries to use it._"

"_I wonder if that was part of the reason why the crows made him bleed instead of dropping his Hit Points. Could their beaks and talons have changed, like the food had, the moment they touched him?_" Kirito mused as he considered what Agil had told him. "_That would make far more sense than it would be for normal attacks to harm him and if that is true, then maybe just teaching him how to properly hold a sword and a few basic stances would help him against the beast monsters. However, that wouldn't help him against Boss Monsters or humanoid monsters that handle weapons and it also wouldn't really help him in a duel with another player._"

"_James never duels; aside from the fact that he has no Sword Skills, he simply refuses to accept any challenges. If he intends to go back out into the dungeons, then he's going to need something aside from his dagger; especially if his Trapping Skills have become corrupted like he seems to believe it did. A lightweight short sword made of something durable would be ideal; even if all he can do is stab the beast that attacks him. He is used to dodging monsters and knows most of their weak spots, so he should be fine once he regains his confidence._"

"_So long as he agrees to the lessons, I don't mind helping him. I just don't want to force him into something he doesn't want to do,_" Kirito stated as he came to a decision. "_Kid's got enough problems without us pushing him into something he doesn't want to do. Do you know where James lives in-game? The idea of sending him home to an empty house or apartment after everything that's happened to him bothers me._"

"_As far as I know, he doesn't own any property and I know for a fact that he prefers to camp outside in the various Dungeons most days rather than rent a room. I've been seriously considering trying to talk him into staying here with me since I found out how old he really is because I have more than enough space but I don't know if he'd see that as me trying to lock him up or not. He's just stubborn enough to snub such an offer if he believes it to be a trap._"

"_You were already planning to help the kid find a way to allow to stay independent; why not hire him to help you in your shop? You could offer him room and board plus a small salary in exchange for his help to organize everything,_" Kirito suggested with a smirk as he gestured towards the piles of junk cluttering up the apartment. "_Once he feels a little more confident, you can even let him handle deliveries and such; which would allow him to travel freely._"

"_I already planned to offer him a job but didn't say anything to him earlier because I feared he would automatically refuse due to how shaken up he's been since we found him. Actually, looking back, he's probably been in a constant state of panic or near panic since the glitch occurred. It would certainly explain why it took him so long to reply to my messages and why he tried to convince me to leave him alone._"

"_I still have a hard time seeing Tracker James when I look at him._"

"_That's right; I'd forgotten that you had not met James before today. I think you'd have gotten along really well with him; he was always smiling no matter what he was doing, forever eager to face the next challenge, and friendly with most everyone though at times he was painfully shy. Prior to this whole fiasco, he was the only player I've met to date that truly didn't care that he'd been trapped in the game. In fact, I always thought he was a bit crazy in the head because he seemed content and at home inside the game._"

"_Can you blame him given what little we've learned about his home life?_" Kirito asked quietly as he glanced off in the direction of the room that Agil had taken James. "_I'd see Aincrad as home too if I had to live with people who told me it would have been better if I'd died with my parents._"

Agil didn't reply and Kirito really didn't need him to because he knew what the older man would say; it was written all over the man's face, after all. The two of them sat there in silence for nearly an hour before a piercing scream caught them off guard as it rang out through the apartment and they rushed into the guest room where they found James trapped in the throws of a nightmare.

Kirito sighed as Agil waded into the room to wake the kid up; it was going to be a long night.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
Experience Points – the points earned for each quest completed and each monster killed  
FullDive – the use of technology to fully immerse one's conscience in a virtual reality  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
Nerve Gear – equipment created by Kayaba Akihiko (Argus); allows the user to enter FullDive  
NERDLES – **Ner**ve **D**irect **L**inkage **E**nvironment **S**ystem (a surgically implanted chip that allows the FullDive system to interface with the brain – the surgically implanted part may or may not be canon as it was something I thought seemed more logical than it just being part of the interface helmet)  
Player Stats – A list of a player's in game statistics and skills  
Skill Points – Experience points that are applied towards mastery of an in game skill

* * *

**AN:** _Kirito vs. Kirigaya Kazuto – okay, I wanted to get this out there now before I got any flames for it; yes, I know that Kazuto is Kirito's real name. The reason I have him refer to himself as Kirito in this chapter is because he is inside of the game and as far as he is concerned, he is Kirito at this point because that was his identity in the game. _

_And before you scream inconsistencies at me and bring up the whole Harry vs. James thing, Harry knows that he is Harry despite the fact that he tells everyone his name is James; he has not given up his identity, he's trying to disassociate his real life from the game but he doesn't really know how to do that. Harry said it clearly in his letter to Agil a chapter or two ago, he was pretending to be someone else; meaning that deep down he was still fully aware of who he was regardless of what name he called himself._

_Kazuto, on the other hand, is both older than him and far more comfortable leaving his 'real' self behind when he enters a game because he'd been involved in RPG's for far longer than Harry. There's also the fact that Harry's imagination was stifled by the Dursleys; something that would further hinder his ability to separate himself from the game (a fact that was noted a chapter or two ago when I made a comment about him having trouble controlling his emotions from the moment he first started playing SAO – an indication that his life as Tracker James was bleeding into his real life just like his real life is bleeding into Tracker James (his shyness and desire to avoid people not entirely due to the language barrier though that contributed to it as well). _

_I hope that clears things up for everyone… _

**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and edited out unnecessary bits of the author's note._


	7. Education

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Seven: Education

_Wednesday, December 27, 2019 10:36 AM_

Harry had ended up sleeping (if you could call the short periods of rest he got between nightmares sleep) for close to three days straight as his soul healed from the damage done by the crows and by the traumatic integration of his soul into the game. On top of that, he needed to regenerate the magic he'd used; a process that took far longer than normal because his soul was currently cut off from the earth and his magical core locked inside the stasis spell preserving his body.

And because his core was inaccessible, he was unable to draw in any ambient magic with which to replace the bulk of what he used; meaning that his soul was forced to generate far more magic than it usually did (which is why it took so long).

During that time, both Agil and Kirito took turns watching over the troubled child; the two of them offering him comfort after each nightmare and encouraging him to eat and drink whenever he was partially conscious.

When Harry did finally wake up, he remained numb and detached for several hours before he snapped back into focus (as if someone had just flipped a switch inside of his brain to turn it on). He remained fairly withdrawn after that; the nine year old feeling lost and uncertain still. He probably would have slunk off with his tail between his legs and found someplace to hole up in out in one of the Dungeons if not for Agil quickly putting a stop to his one and only attempt to sneak out of the apartment.

It was Kirito that eventually brought Harry out of his funk, the teen still child enough to draw Harry into various games and activities (like pillow fights and word games). The moment Harry was no longer broody and twitchy, Agil sat him down and carefully explained the proposal that he and Kirito had come up with to help Harry survive the game. To the surprise of both man and teen, Harry had simply shrugged his shoulders and said okay to both the job and the lessons.

When asked why he wasn't even making a token rebellious refusal (as they'd half expected him to), Harry had dryly told them that he was stubborn not stupid which had made Kirito crack up and Agil shake his head. Harry and Kirito had then added each other to their Friend List while Kirito quizzed Harry on his Skills.

Agil had made choking sounds when Harry had confessed that he'd never used a sword in the game because he'd killed himself each and every time he'd tried in the beta version; even after gaining enough Experience. Kirito had stared at him in shock while demanding to know why he'd been so drawn to a game called _Sword_ Art Online if he couldn't use a sword despite the simplicity of the attacks that had been programmed into the game. Harry had shrugged and said he just wanted to see what his cousin had found so fascinating about the game and had stayed because he'd fallen in love with the world of Aincrad and the freedom that the game had given him.

A world where he was free to choose who and what he wanted to be.

Harry's new training started with Agil dragging him down into the shop in order for him to pick out the perfect sword for him to use (one with the lowest Damage Rating in order to prevent needless mishaps). Kirito joined them and the teen sat on the counter and laughed as Agil rummaged through the shop for various weapons while Harry would refuse each blade that was proffered. Each time he refused a weapon, Harry would tell the pair exactly how he'd killed himself with a version of that particular blade in the beta test (some deaths were particularly violent and a few were just plain stupid while others were so comical they could have come straight out of a Monty Python skit).

In the end, Harry picked out a Highland Dirk that was more dagger than sword. The blade itself was twelve inches long and made from durable steel, shaped like an elongated triangle (the tip of which was slightly rounded like a spike and very sharp), and serrated along one edge. The blade was set into a hilt made from what looked like a section of antler from a stag. Unlike most of the longer swords, the hilt of the dirk fit perfectly in Harry's diminutive hand and he had enough practice handling an eight inch dagger that the additional four inches wouldn't hinder him. All in all, it was the perfect learner's blade for Harry and once he was competent enough he could move up to something with a bit more length (though he wouldn't).

When Harry had tried to pay for the short sword, Agil told him to close out his Menu and to consider the blade a belated Christmas gift. Harry had jumped and stared at the older man with wide green eyes filled with confusion and wonder over that little declaration; he'd never been given any presents for Christmas before and had no idea what was expected of him in return. Kirito had further muddied the waters when he'd given Harry a jar of honey that he'd won on a side quest. After much internal debate, Harry had given Agil a couple of high quality Furgrin pelts (which could be made into protective clothing) and Kirito received a large clump of sweet Winter Berries (a hard to find but not quite rare treat in the game) that the nine year old had gained from that last battle with the Carrion Crows in return.

Harry had worn a small smile for the rest of the day; the young gamer thrilled over the fact that he'd been able to give his friend**s** (emphasis on the plural) Christmas gifts for the first time ever.

Having direction in his life once more, even if it was under the guidance of an adult, helped Harry regain a measure of equilibrium though he still hadn't recovered his happy-go-lucky persona that had been the one of his trademarks as Tracker James. He enjoyed working for Agil and he secretly loved the fact that the man constantly taught him as they worked; he helped him to further improve his grasp of Japanese, taught him Italian and Spanish, quizzed him on math basics so he'd not forget too much (the other subjects harder to cover without textbooks), and built on his in-game knowledge of the various weapons, armor, and materials that passed through the shop.

Harry in turn helped organize the shop (and avoided any weapon larger than a dirk), cleaned up the upstairs apartment they shared (even though Agil insisted he didn't have to), and after the first two weeks ran errands and deliveries for Agil. During a couple of evenings a week and on weekends, Kirito would pop round to take Harry out to the fields to help him get used to handling his new weapon. When he could, Agil would tag along for those lessons and encourage Harry to test out his other Skills (to make certain he didn't lose any Skill Points through disuse).

After witnessing first hand how winded Harry was after the first couple of lessons, Agil and Kirito helped Harry create an exercise regime that would strengthen his in-game body. They doubted the exercises would have any effect on his physical body but those exercises did seem to have an effect on his in-game stamina (the exercises actually strengthening his soul while the sword lessons and other Skills exercised his magic).

The only reason they'd even gone that route was for the psychological benefit since they hadn't really believed the exercises would have any impact on his game avatar. That they had affected his performance was a bit of a shock. Once they got over their shock, they chalked the effects up to the same glitch that made Items behave more realistically around the nine year old.

By mid-February, Harry had regained much of his confidence with the help of Agil and Kirito. He'd also learned that he still retained the ability to use all of his in-game Skills despite the odd delays that plagued each Skill the first time he'd use each of the various abilities after the glitch. The knowledge that he could still use those Skills had been the biggest factor in regaining his confidence. The only hurdle that remained in his way was reaching level thirty-one (something he had stubbornly refused to do); Harry was terrified of reaching the next level.

His memory of the pain that he'd felt after what had happened when he reached level thirty had not faded in the least. He still suffered through nightmares about that day on a regular basis (and he still believed the glitch was triggered by his reaching level thirty instead of a mere coincidence of timing).

Harry would finally bite the bullet and level up at the end of February, after Agil had sat him down and told him that he'd never grow any stronger if he let his fears hold him back. The man had then immediately threatened to haul him up to the fourth floor (which had been cleared by the second week of January) and lock him into the nearest Dungeon until he reached the next level. Collecting the last needed Experience Points had been a rather easy if stressful experience for Harry but he had not been alone this time (Agil had stayed by his side the entire time).

When it was over and nothing had happened beyond the normal level increases (though his gold HP bar hadn't appeared to change), he had a far easier time continuing to grow as a player. He still feared each rise in level though and would make certain he was some where he felt relatively safe before making the kill that would bump him up; so as not to be trapped in the middle of nowhere all alone again should he get stuck in another glitch. Agil or Kirito often tagged along for those battles in order to lend him moral support until he felt more confident.

During this time, Harry's unrecognized magic continued to scan and replicate each piece of gaming code it encountered; transmuting game based attacks into magic based attacks that mimicked the game attacks perfectly. It even began integrating itself into the Menu each time Harry used the various menu features. By the middle of March, Harry would be unconsciously using his magic to interact with every aspect of the game and the more he used his magic, the more magic his soul created in order to keep up with the demand and the faster it began producing that magic.

His magic was also starting to affect other aspects of the game but the changes were so small that no one really noticed them (traces of his magic staying with those Items he carried in his Inventory or handled on a regular basis even long after he sold or traded them off). At the same time, the young wizard's magic was undergoing changes of its own as the computer code it absorbed and replicated altered the way Harry's magic functioned on a primitive level.

Towards the end of March, after reaching level thirty-five, Harry began to once again enter the various dungeons on the first five floors in order to collect Items in between delivery jobs. He no longer took on any clients (Tracker James was believed to be dead due to his last client spreading tales of how he'd shattered over the previous months) and any time he went above the third floor he had company in the form of Agil or Kirito but Harry didn't mind in the least. He felt (in some ways) that he had more freedom now than he had had as Tracker James.

Of course, being a child within the game had its drawbacks too.

The ALF, or the Army as they were now called by most players due to how large the Guild had grown, gave him considerable grief every time he tried to leave Hajimari no Machi or one of the other villages where they had members stationed. He'd had to get extremely creative in his methods of leaving the village as the older players in the Army went out of their way to keep him and the other children (most of whom were between three and four years older than Harry) inside of the village. Harry understood their reasons for doing so but that didn't make the restrictions they tried to impose on him any more tolerable in his mind.

They even attempted to prevent him from using the Teleport Gates to travel between floors to make deliveries; those that tried were humiliated with creative pranks.

April first of the year twenty-twenty marked the end of Harry's lessons with Kirito, though the two of them still kept in contact. On the eighth, Harry learned that Kirito joined the Black Cats of the Full Moon Guild and he wished the teen good luck in his efforts to help the relatively low leveled Guild Members to grow stronger. Harry, in the mean time, worked towards gaining level forty (which he feared would trigger another torturous glitch because of the significance of the level). He also worked on mastering his last five Skills (which included One Handed Sword, Parry, Light Shield Equipment, Hiding, and Acrobatics – with the first three barely in the four hundreds as the first two were the ones Kirito had chosen to teach him and the third was one Agil had asked him to pick up; so that he could wear higher quality armor to better protect himself).

At the start of the third week of April, Harry took his first solo trip up to the front line since the glitch in order to truly test his Skills so he knew whether or not he could rely upon himself in a sticky situation. Agil had wanted to go with him but Harry had been determined to go alone because he felt he was relying too much on the older man to bail him out if things took a turn for the worse. He did, on the other hand, promise to message Agil if he got into any trouble that he couldn't handle.

Harry returned to the apartment he still shared with Agil in the dead of night five days later seriously injured, physically and magically exhausted, and his HP bar down to a sliver once more (Harry still unaware of his magic) but in no way beaten. As Agil treated and bandaged the twin gashes on his face, Harry regaled the older man with a blow by blow account of his recent adventure with a level of excitement and wonder that he'd not exhibited since he'd been caught in the glitch at level thirty.

"_It was amazing, Agil…_"

* * *

_Several days earlier…  
Tuesday, April 21, 2020 8:15 AM_

Harry stepped into the colossal forest and stared up at the trees with wide eyes. He felt a thread of fear snake its way through his heart as the solitude pressed down on him for a moment (making him feel completely insignificant) but he quickly beat it down as he took the time to appreciate the beauty of the forest dungeon. After a few minutes, he began moving deeper into the forest, taking care to keep an eye (and an ear) out for any monsters that were lurking near by.

He'd only been in the forest for two hours when he ran into the scariest monster he'd faced yet; a Killer Mantis. The giant green monstrosity was easily four times Harry's height and had wicked looking scythes instead of the usual spine like appendages on the ends of its front legs. The thing managed to slice through three of Harry's snare traps when he tried to trap it at the start of the fight and Harry cursed his luck. Knowing he couldn't go toe to toe with the creature (seeing as how he was practically snack size when compared to the monster), Harry led it on a wild goose chase through the forest as he desperately tried to put enough distance between them so he could set up a pit trap.

Harry spent three hours playing cat and mouse with the giant insect and once the initial fear wore off, he thoroughly enjoyed the challenge that the Mantis provided him. At the end of that three hour chase, Harry managed to tangle the monster up in a series of snare traps just long enough for him to set up a spiked pit trap. Getting the mantis to walk right into the trap had been easy too. The problem had been that he hadn't made the pit deep enough and while it did considerable damage to the creature, it didn't destroy it completely but it was at least no longer able to chase after him.

Avoiding the swinging scythes, Harry made his way to the back of the creature and scrambled up onto its back in order to reach its head. He then dealt the death blow to the back of the monster's head; causing the Killer Mantis to crumple forward, spilling Harry back onto the ground. The moment he was no longer touching the dead monster, it shattered into millions of pieces and Harry let out a whoop of satisfaction at the success. In all of the excitement over beating what had been a difficult opponent, Harry never noticed that he'd reached level forty without any glitches.

Over the next two days, Harry would defeat four more of the giant insectoid monsters; each defeat taking less time than the previous one and each trap better tailored to the huge monsters until he'd managed to trap and kill number five without the need to use his dirk to deliver the killing blow.

He'd reached the center of the forest shortly after that final kill and found himself on the edge of a grassy clearing filled with giant moss covered boulders that were nearly as tall as the surrounding trees. On the opposite side of where he'd entered, two of the largest boulders were leaning against each other to form what looked like a huge cavern. Harry hovered on the edge of the clearing for hours after he first stumbled upon it; the nine year old feeling on edge because the clearing just screamed Boss Monster.

Harry spent his fourth day edging his way around the clearing without actually stepping foot inside of it, noting potential hiding places, perfect trap locations, and areas that would be best to avoid so as not to be trapped with no escape. His traps were pretty useless against Boss Monsters but they could be used to slow one down or confuse one just enough to allow him to get close enough to strike out with his dirk. He'd learned that on the many trips he'd taken with Kirito over the past few months. Sure, Harry could have walked away from whatever Boss Monster was lurking within the clearing but that monster was his entire reason for coming to this forest (well maybe not that _exact_ monster but one like it).

On the morning of his fifth day, Harry sent a message to Agil letting him know he was going to fight one last monster before heading back home; conveniently leaving out the fact that it was a Boss Monster he was going to face. He then stepped into the clearing with his dirk held firmly in one gloved hand and a coil of razor wire in the other (a rather sturdy wire that could cut through a tree like a knife through butter that Harry had been saving it for a moment like this). The instant he reached the center of the clearing, a mighty roar echoed through the forest as a great moss covered monster emerged from the depths of the cave.

The beast was huge, standing several feet taller than a Killer Mantis, and its burnished deep green scales glistened in the sunlight that shone into the clearing. The dark brown fur that grew between the scales was green and yellow with moss and tangled to the point that it was matted into thick, rope-like strands in places. It had a long and sinuous body (like that of a snake or a serpent), a long tail tipped with deadly looking blood-red spikes, four stubby legs, and it stood on clawed feet that ended in serrated red talons the color of blood. Its head was a cross between a lizard, a dragon, and a bird; sharp looking horns, long pointed ears, long snout, mouthful of needle sharp teeth, and a beak like protrusion on the tip of its mouth.

Its glowing acid-yellow eyes fixed themselves on Harry at that moment and the creature roared a second time as it unfurled ragged bat-like wings that were covered with long ropy vines of moss and fur on the back of the leathery appendages.

Harry had just stumbled upon the Forest Boss; the Mossy Wyvern.

He only had a few seconds to take in the breathtaking sight of the beast looming over him before it attacked. The wyvern was fast and ferocious as it attacked Harry with mouth, claws, wings, and tail. Its powerful attacks did considerable damage to the boulders lining the clearing each time Harry dodged the attacks and Harry suspected that he'd die a most painful death if the creature managed to catch him with an attack. The first hour of the battle was spent analyzing the wyvern's attack patterns and searching for any weaknesses that the beast might have while Harry continued to dodge each attack.

The next four hours would be spent whittling away at the wyvern's HP using his dirk and an assortment of snare and net traps. Twice, Harry was nearly smashed by foot or tail when he didn't dodge fast enough and twice his still unrecognized magic rose up around him to shield him from the fatal blow. Towards the end of the fifth hour of battle, he scored his first big hit against the creature when he damaged its right eye with a well timed thrust of his dirk. The wyvern had retaliated by raking him across the face with its claws. The pain had triggered another accidental outburst as his magic called down white lightning from the heavens and electrocuted the wyvern in response; dropping the creature's HP down into the red.

Harry had finished it off at that point by driving his dirk into the creature's left eye before wrapping its neck tight with the razor wire and pulling tight as he jumped from the beast's back; the wire slicing through the weaker scales on the underside of the wyvern's neck. Collapsing to the ground, Harry had stared blurrily up at the beast he'd slain as it exploded with the sound of shattering glass just seconds after he'd fallen. A grin had formed on his face as he passed out from a combination of pain and exhaustion at that point.

* * *

_Present…  
Sunday, April 26, 2020 10:25 PM_

"…_and I didn't wake up until after night had fallen. The Mossy Wyvern was a magnificent creature though, Agil! The way it moved and how fast it could whip around and attack. You should have seen the way his claws ripped through the boulders in the clearing as if they'd been made from butter! I swear his teeth were three times as long as I am tall and sharper than your axe._"

"_Baka, you could have been killed!_" Agil growled as he scowled at Harry.

"_No. I would not have died no matter what,_" Harry countered with quiet conviction, his earlier enthusiasm dimming in the wake of the worry and fear he'd heard in Agil's voice. "_Any time I was about to take a fatal blow, this glowing gold shield would form around me and stop the attack. When the wyvern raked his claws down my face, white lightening shot down out of the sky and hit the monster; dropping its HP down into the red. It was almost like magic, Agil, the way I won that fight._"

"_There is no magic in Aincrad, James,_" Agil insisted as he finished securing the bandages across Harry's face.

"_You're wrong,_" Harry insisted as he turned to stare out the window at the full moon that hung above the skies over Hajimari no Machi. "_This entire world __**is**__ the magic. Where else would you ever find fantastical creatures like the Mossy Wyvern? Inside this game, a person's dreams can come to life and the only thing limiting them is their own strength of will. It is terrible to know that one man destroyed the wonder of Ken no Sekai by trapping everyone here because this could have been the start of something wonderful. A place where people from all over the world could have come together to share in the wonder that is Aincrad._"

"_I'm glad to hear that you have finally found yourself again, James._"

"_What do you mean, Agil?_"

"_You changed after you got caught up in that glitch and not for the better; and no, I'm not just referring to your avatar reverting to reflect your physical appearance. It was hard to see you struggle with your fears over the past few months and I had been afraid that you'd lost far more than your innocence that day. You'd been naught but a shell of your former self up until tonight._"

"_Oh._"

"_Lighten up, gaki,_" Agil admonished with a soft chuckle as he reached out to ruffle Harry's hair. "_Now you never did mention what treasures you netted from your fantastical battle with the Mossy Wyvern._"

"_Oh! You should see the two dozen or so scales I picked up! They're almost as tall as I am and harder than diamonds. I bet they'd make awesome armor or shields! And then I got something that is called the Dragon's Eye but I don't know what it's supposed to do; here, let me show it to you…_"

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**Translations:** Japanese to English

Baka – idiot  
Gaki – brat  
Hajimari no Machi – Starting City or Town of Beginnings  
Ken no Sekai – Sword Art Online

**Game Terminology:**

Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
Experience Points – the points earned for each quest completed and each monster killed  
Guild – group of players that work together for a common goal  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
Party – a group of two or more individuals that work together for a period of time or a set task  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline  
Skill Points – Experience points that are applied towards mastery of an in game skill  
Sword Skills – programmed movements that initiate attacks within the game

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**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	8. Gameover

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Eight: Gameover

_Saturday, November 06, 2021 9:00 AM_

Harry hitched his silvery-blue dragon scale shield a little higher up on his back as he followed Agil through the streets of Grandum (located on the fifty-fifth floor) towards the Knights of the Blood (KoB) Headquarters where a number of solo players, small player groups, and Guilds were gathering to join the fight against the boss monster on the seventy-fifth floor. It had taken them two years to get as far in the game as they had and during that time Harry had grown mentally, emotionally, magically, and socially. Physically, he still looked much like a seven or eight year old though he wasn't quite as scrawny looking as he'd been right after he'd reverted to his physical appearance.

As his eyes took in the various buildings, Harry let his mind wander through the memories he'd collected during the time he'd lived inside of the game. During the past year and a half, he'd continued on much as he had during those first six weeks of the game; hunting rare items, plants, and creatures throughout the various floors as he steadily leveled up. After facing his third wyvern, two months after his tenth birthday, he'd become known as Dragon Slayer James the Reckless due to the fact that he always sought out and faced the dragons and wyverns alone.

Most just called him Dragon James for short (Dragon becoming something of both a surname and a title for the eleven year old much like Tracker had been prior to the glitch that saw him striped of his avatar).

Despite the increases in his Stats, Abilities, and confidence, he still worked part time for Agil and continued to live with the merchant; Harry had come to see the older man as a father-figure by the time he'd turned ten (though he'd never once told Agil how he felt about him). Agil had supported and encouraged him to grow stronger as well as made certain that Harry took proper care of himself and didn't neglect his education.

Harry in turn helped the older man help the lower level players level up so that they would survive the game; bringing in rare Items that could be sold for a tidy profit which in turn was used to help equip the players with proper weapons and armor. Harry never kept more than five percent of the profit and only when he needed to stock up on supplies or save up to purchase new or replacement equipment.

Kirito, on the other hand, had practically disappeared around the time the Guild he'd joined had been killed in a dungeon trap; at the time, the teen had suffered from a guilty conscience because he'd been the only survivor. It wasn't until after their second Christmas in the game that the teen once more began to turn up regularly; though still nowhere near as often as he had before the death of his Guild. After he turned back up, the teen had taken to teaching Harry a fourth Skill; that of Blade Throwing since Harry still refused to use any sword that was longer than fifteen inches in length (the hilt not included).

By that time, Harry had also added three more friends to his list; Klein, Asuna, and Lisbeth.

Klein was the same man that Harry had seen Kirito with on the day of the game's launch. Harry had run into the man and his Guild shortly after defeating the Shady Wyvern (his third lesser dragon boss) and it was Klein that had dubbed him Dragon Slayer James the Reckless after he and his Guild had witnessed the tail end of that fight. The loud and friendly man had then tried to take him back to the church in Hajimari no Machi on the first floor (where the younger players that were still under the age of fourteen were being watched over).

Harry had instead dragged the man to Agil so that his self-adopted father could explain to the man that Harry was not a lost stray. Klein eventually became something of a cross between a fun uncle and an older brother to Harry as he tended to make certain that Harry had fun every once in a while and the man loved to exchange stories with him about various adventures and battles they'd experienced in the game.

Harry had met Asuna through Agil when the talented teen had come to Agil's shop looking for rare cooking ingredients in order to improve her Cooking Skill around the one year mark. Asuna had been the first client that Harry had taken with him on a Search since he'd reached level thirty (at Agil's insistence) and one of two girls that he'd met within the game that didn't automatically dismiss him as a helpless child just because he was young and short (the other being Lisbeth).

She had developed a tendency to mother him though; constantly delivering 'home cooked' meals, snacks, and treats to the shop for him at least four times a week. She also willingly passed along rumors and hints regarding the locations of rare or highly sought after Items and other Boss Dragons (as opposed to the small, pet-like dragons raised by the Tamers in the game) in exchange for uncommon or rare cooking ingredients; that was her way of acknowledging his abilities.

Asuna had been the one to introduce Harry to Lisbeth, a skilled blacksmith, after she learned that he was looking to get some of the dragon bone, fangs, and scales he'd collected made into armor, weapons, and tools. The pink haired teen had let out a squeal of excitement the moment she'd set eyes on Harry and pulled him into a hug (to his shock) before Asuna had even finished introducing the two of them. She had also repeatedly raved over how adorable he was, how gorgeous his jewel green eyes were, and how sweet and brave it was that he was escorting Asuna.

When Lisbeth learned that he wanted her to make weapons, tools, and armor from dragon parts she'd squealed a second time before demanding to see the quality of the materials he had brought with him. She had immediately demanded to know who he'd purchased the materials from (because of their high quality) and when he'd told her that he had collected them himself, she'd been shocked. The moment she had recovered from the shock, she'd immediately ordered him to add her to his Friend List and allow her to go with him the next time he faced a dragon before agreeing to make the items he'd requested.

Harry had only agreed to her demand because Asuna had vouched for the other girl.

The tools, daggers, dirks, armor, and shield she made with the materials he had collected were some of the best Harry had ever owned in the game and not only were they of high quality with excellent Battle Stats, they were beautiful in their simplicity. Lisbeth didn't mother Harry like Asuna did but she did treat him like he was her little brother whenever she tagged along on one of his dungeon hunting expeditions. She was especially fond of hugging him; much to his mortification.

Lisbeth had been the one to tell him about the Frost Dragon that she and Kirito had faced back on the twenty-fourth of June in the year twenty-twenty-one and she'd tagged along with him when he'd gone to see the creature for himself on his eleventh birthday. She'd tried to talk him out of fighting the creature because of how strong it was but by that time Harry had already faced five other dragons and taken them out. Harry had simply smiled at her and told her that he knew what he was doing before he led her to a sheltered area where she wouldn't get caught up in the battle while mentally preparing for the fight.

He'd developed a special set of traps to deal with any dragons he faced using the diamond wire he'd discovered in a store on floor thirty-five to make intricate nets that would ground the flying monsters; making them easier to fight. His secret to slaying the powerful monsters, however, lay in his magic, which he'd discovered around October of the year twenty-twenty and he had spent several months mastering the various 'spells' he had discovered through trial and error. He could call down lightning; use the four basic elements to form attacks (fire, water, wind, and earth); command the light, the shadows, and electricity (not to be confused with his lightning attacks); create semi-transparent shields; enhance his dirk with any of the elements; and Teleport anywhere within the game without relying upon the Teleport Crystals like the other players.

He still wasn't aware that it was _his_ magic that he was using (as opposed to some special Skill the game had gifted him) and he still had no idea that it was his magic that helped his soul to interact with the game but that was to be expected since his aunt and uncle had consistently and frequently told him that there was no such thing as magic. Despite that, Harry still believed that magic existed; though not in the same sense that most magicals believed that magic existed. To him, the game world he'd been trapped inside of was magic; the magic wonder of incredible technological advances that he'd never imagined existed until he'd stolen Dudley's computer and gaming equipment out of the trash.

The battle had lasted two hours (his shortest dragon fight yet) and he'd earned his strongest dragon scales yet (one of which would be made into a shield), a pair of fangs, several claws, and something called the Dragon's Heart. The Heart would go into his special collection of strange treasures along with the two Dragon's Eyes he'd collected (one each from the Mossy Wyvern and the Sandy Wyvern), the Dragon's Tail (from the Shady Wyvern), the Dragon's Tongue (from the Flame Dragon), and the Dragon's Wings (from the Spark Dragon).

Two months after facing the Frost Dragon, he'd pick up Dragon's Skin from the Water Dragon (the seventh and final dragon he'd face in the game), though he still had no clue what the Items were intended to do and liked to believe that they were the source of his magic (since he'd only discovered his Magic Skill _after_ he'd faced his third wyvern – not counting the lighting that had been called down during that first battle).

The eleven year old was brought back to the present by the enthusiastic greeting Klein gave him when the twenty-six year old saw him tagging along behind Agil. Harry wriggled and laughed as the somewhat immature man tickled him and gave him a noogie before tossing him over his shoulder like a sack of grain as he greeted Agil next. Pushing up so he was no longer dangling upside down, Harry smiled and waved at the other five members of the Fuurinkazan (Klein's Guild) standing behind the man; all five of whom he knew through Klein, though he'd never gotten very close to any of them and they weren't on his Friend List.

Eventually, Harry was set back down on his feet as the two adults began talking about the plans for facing the Boss Monster up on the seventy-fifth floor; Agil partying up with Klein and his Guild for the attack. Harry normally partied up with Agil whenever they entered a dungeon together but the man had been selected to lead a number of the smaller Guilds during the battle. Harry refused to form a party with anyone outside of his five friends because they were the only ones that were aware of his status of an Indefinable Immortal Object; something all Party Members that were of a higher level than him would be able to see the moment he joined a Party (or Guild).

That was his main reason for not taking clients into the dungeons like he had prior to his metamorphosis (aside from Asuna or Lisbeth but they were more than just simple clients, they were his friends).

This would be Harry's third time participating in a floor Boss fight; the two previous ones had taken place on the forty-first and fifty-sixth floors. Both of the previous fights had been difficult and he'd mostly stayed out of the way and used his traps when he could to distract the Boss Monster while the others attacked it. Most of the adults that had been present for those fights had complained about him tagging along prior to the start of the battle (more than a few of them had also grown angry with Agil because the merchant warrior had brought Harry with him). They had apologized after the battles to both Harry and Agil after seeing first hand what Harry was capable of doing with his traps.

Harry was only half listening to the discussion between the adults when Klein called out to someone and Harry glanced up to see the man waving towards Kirito and Asuna who'd just arrived hand in hand. While Agil and Klein exchanged pleasantries and joked around with the two teens, Harry couldn't help but notice the new matching rings that the two were wearing. He smiled at the evidence that his two friends had stopped dancing around their feelings for each other and opened his mouth to congratulate (read tease) them at the same time as the two of them finally noticed him present.

"_James!? Why in the world are you here?_" Kirito demanded with a frown (the teen had been worried about the pending fight ever since Heathcliff – the leader of the KoB – had briefed him and Asuna the previous evening).

"_To help, of course,_" Harry stated with a frown of his own as he glanced up to see the worry in both Kirito's and Asuna's eyes. "_I've helped in two other Floor Boss fights and did all right._"

"_James…_" Asuna murmured worriedly.

"_I'll be fine and I brought my Dragon Wire,_" Harry assured the young woman; the eleven year old referring to the diamond wire that he always used to help him defeat the dragons he faced.

Before either teen could form another protest, Heathcliff appeared with a small contingent of KoB Members and opened the corridor leading to the Boss Room up on the seventy-fifth floor. In order to prevent anyone from stopping him from going, Harry latched onto the back of Agil's shirt and stuck to the man he secretly viewed as a father like glue. Klein and the Fuurinkazan moved in behind the pair in order to watch his back; the small guild had been involved in both of the other floor Boss fights that Harry had participated in and all of the members were well aware of his capabilities and the benefits gained from allowing him to help despite his age.

The entryway leading into the Boss's chamber was dark and creepy and Harry shivered in the oppressive atmosphere that clung to the room. Behind him, he heard Kirito mutter under his breath about having a bad feeling and Harry wished the teen would give a show of his usual bravado because the knowledge that the stronger teen was frightened only made Harry feel even more nervous.

Hearing Asuna reassure the boy actually eased some of the tension Harry felt and the eleven year old snickered silently to himself as he made a mental note to tease the older boy about being reassured by a girl once the fight was over. He owed Kirito anyway for all of the times he'd teased Harry about how he used to snuggle with Agil during the first six months in the game (something that the eleven year old still adamantly denied he'd done).

All thoughts of teasing fled as the doors to the chamber were opened by Heathcliff and the group gave out a wordless battle cry as everyone rushed forward into the room as one. They made it to the center of the platform and slid to a stop as they spread out in a loose circle in order to search for the boss. The group's earlier fear returned when the doors slammed shut behind them and vanished even though the Boss still hadn't made an appearance.

"_Above us!_" Asuna cried out suddenly and more than one of the adults panicked as they all glanced up to find a creature called the Skull Reaper clinging to the ceiling upside down.

Harry stared in horror at the humongous monster that looked like it was part alien, part centipede, part Killer Mantis, part spider, and all ugly. It was all bones and blades, had hundreds of dangerously sharp limbs (including two scythes like the Killer Mantis – only bigger), and four glowing red eyes set in a deformed and demonic skull. Before Harry had even finished taking in the creature's appearance, the thing had dropped down into their midst to kill two adults with a single swipe of a scythe while everyone else promptly scattered in terror.

As he watched the two men shatter, Harry feared for the lives of his four friends that had come with him to battle the monstrosity. He didn't have to worry about himself, he'd long since learned that there was nothing in this game that could kill him; even if the monsters could draw his blood and cause him pain when they attacked him.

Heathcliff moved to block the deadly scythes with Asuna and Kirito while the dark haired teen ordered everyone else to attack the Skull Reaper from the sides. Harry stood frozen on the edge of the platform, feeling completely useless against a creature that was four or five times larger than the biggest dragon he'd faced, right up until he saw Agil take a hit when the man courageously rushed forward to save some of the others. Letting out a snarl of rage over how close he'd just come to loosing the closest thing to a father he'd ever known, Harry finally rushed forward to join the fight as he pulled his shield off his back and dug out his Dragon Wire.

As he ran, Harry wove the wire into a net snare that he used to entangle several of the creature's flailing limbs before he slid under the belly of the beast and ended up just a few feet away from Klein and two other members of Fuurinkazan. He pulled the wire tight as he used his shield to defend against an attack from one if the creature's legs before he made another net snare with the same wire and yelled at Klein to throw him over the top of the beast even as he used the new net snare to tangle up another dozen limbs.

Seconds later, he soared through the air over the back of the beast before he landed roughly on the other side and grunted in pain as both knees had been bruised when he'd fallen onto his knees from the poor landing while he struggled to keep hold of the wire in his hand. It took him a few minutes to recover before he was up and moving again so he could tie off the wire so that the limbs he'd entangled were secured; giving the group a two foot section of the creature that they could attack freely with less of a chance of getting hit by the beast.

He was then forced to shield himself from another attack as the Reaper lunged forward to attack those in front while the rest of its body shifted back and forth. Dancing back out of the way, Harry pulled out another length of wire and began preparing another net trap as his eyes stayed on the Reaper and the other players' efforts to bring the monster down. He caught sight of Agil again and each time he did, he would feel a rush of relief at knowing that the man was still alive and fighting.

He felt some distress when he could no longer see Klein but he tried not to worry about the boisterous Guild Leader as he knew the man was a good player. A glance towards the front of the beast revealed Kirito and Asuna both still fighting side by side along with Heathcliff in their efforts to keep the monster's attention focused entirely on the three of them so the others could freely attack the boss. Another few minutes passed as Harry caught his breath and tested his knees to determine whether or not he needed to take a potion before he rejoined the fight.

When he determined that his knees weren't seriously injured aside from being bruised and a bit stiff, Harry darted back into the fray to tie up another section of legs. This time he aimed for a section closer to the front of the beast in order to potentially hinder its ability to maneuver but the damn thing wouldn't sit still. Worse yet, those people that were part of the KoB (bar Asuna and Kirito) kept getting in his way or pushing him back because they thought him useless.

It would take him several hours before he managed to land another trap on the Reaper because of their interference and he was more than a little irritated about it because he'd only managed to tangle up four or five legs on one side and it did nothing to slow the beast. Panting, Harry wiped the sweat from his face as he hung his shield on his back and moved away to prep another section of wire; this time preparing a lasso trap. He was on the move again two minutes later as he sought to loop the end of his lasso around one of the rib sections of the monster's torso.

Another hour passed before he managed to snag a rib and the moment the loop settled snugly against the bone protrusion he was darting back towards the tail. Halfway between the front of the Reaper and the first section of legs he'd tied up, Harry looped the length of wire around a single leg that had been striking out at another player and pulled it taut (a move that also saved a fellow player from a fatal wound); hoping to cut its mobility in half if he tied it tight enough.

The wire slipped through Harry's glove clad fingers as the powerful boss skittered sideways and he would have lost his grip completely if not for a familiar pair of arms wrapping around him and clamping down on the wire just inches above his. Harry felt a surge of warmth as he looked up and flashed a tight smile at Agil that the man returned. The two of them then hauled on the wire to draw the captured leg towards the front of the monster; a task that took a good forty minutes and the help of another three men that had partied up with Agil.

The instant the Reaper's long body began curving due to their efforts, Agil helped Harry to tie off the trap before he clapped Harry on the back of the shoulder as he and the other adults returned to the fight.

Harry then used Sprint to slip beneath the Reaper to the other side where he hoped to repeat the same attack. He had only managed to turn halfway around to face the monster once more when he got stabbed through the back of his right shoulder (one of the few areas his dragon scale armor didn't cover) by the Reaper's stinger-like tail and he screamed as he was yanked off his feet and thrown through the air. He heard Agil cry out his name but Harry had no time to reassure his friend as he slammed down hard on the platform before he rolled right off the edge. He barely managed to grab hold of the edge with his left hand as his shield dropped off his back and tumbled to the dungeon floor far below.

Up on the platform, the others battled on without Harry; most of the adults assumed that Harry had been killed since a number of them had seen him take a direct hit and they could no longer see him on the platform. Those individuals that knew he could not be killed knew he was still alive but were unable to lend him a hand at the moment due to the ongoing fight. About thirty minutes later, the Skull Reaper shattered in death and the word congratulations flashed into being on top of a huge blue rectangle in a burst of white light that Harry could just barely see from where he dangled precariously by one hand.

The sound of people collapsing in exhaustion and a few cries of relief rang through the room for a moment before silence descended upon the platform as someone asked how many people had been lost. Harry felt his heart rising up in the back of his throat as another player answered; the eleven year old hoping and praying that all of his friends had survived. He also hoped that one of them would come give him a hand sometime soon since he didn't know how much longer he could hold on to the edge with just one hand. After another couple of minutes had passed, he began to suspect that they had not seen him slide over the edge during the heat of the battle.

He was just about to call out to them in order to get someone to give him a hand up (his right arm currently useless because of his injury) when he heard a commotion up on the platform as Kirito attacked Heathcliff. Harry nearly lost his grip on the platform's edge in shock when it was revealed that Heathcliff was an Immortal Object, like Harry. Things up top were quickly getting out of hand as Harry listened with dawning horror as Kirito unmasked the leader of the KoB as Kayaba Akihiko; the man that had trapped them inside of a game for two years.

The other adults began muttering when Heathcliff confirmed Kirito's accusations before he revealed that he was to be the final boss monster they faced upon reaching the one hundredth floor. Harry felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he heard the sound of several people falling to the ground and more than one confused and frightened cry ring out. He knew something was happening up top but he couldn't see what was going on and it was making him angry.

His anger turned to horror an instant later when he heard Kirito ask Kayaba if he was going to kill everyone in order to prevent those players present from spreading the word about Heathcliff being Kayaba. Their captor (for truly, that was what he was to them) denied the accusation and instead told them that he would be waiting for them at the top of the castle. Relief flooded through the eleven year old right up until Kayaba offered Kirito the chance to end the game right then by dueling Kayaba a second time; as a reward for figuring out who he was.

Harry wondered when his friend had first faced the man for a moment before he felt his earlier terror return tenfold as he heard Kirito accept. Needing to protect his friend, Harry struggled to pull himself back up onto the platform but found himself unable to do so because of his injured arm. Tears began pouring from his eyes as he heard Kirito addressing Agil, Klein, and Asuna with what sounded like his final words before he asked Kayaba to make certain that Asuna didn't kill herself if he died during the duel.

The fight started not long after Kayaba agreed to Kirito's request.

With each clash of Kirito's swords against Kayaba's shields, Harry felt his anger, frustration, and fear growing. Forcing himself to push through the pain he felt, Harry lifted his right arm and dragged himself up onto the platform inch by inch with sheer determination and more than a little desperation. He'd just pulled his head up above the platform in time to witness Asuna take a fatal blow as she used her body to shield Kirito from a fatal attack. Harry stopped breathing and felt his heart break as he watched the girl who had mothered him for the past year shatter in death as she was cradled in Kirito's arms.

He then witnessed Kirito break due to Asuna's death before Kayaba stabbed him through the chest. Harry let out a whispered protest and pulled his chest up onto the platform as he struggled to reach Kirito before he too vanished in a shower of crystal shards. He thought maybe Kirito would live when he saw the teen thrust Asuna's sword into Kayaba's chest but just two seconds later, both teen and man exploded in death together. Harry froze in disbelief as he stared at the scattering shards that had once been Kirito.

"_No,_" Harry whispered again in protest as he began shaking his head even as the system announced that the game had been cleared. He then closed his eyes, pressed his face to the floor, and screamed out in denial, "_**NO**__! Kirito! Asuna! COME BACK!_"

"_James!_"

Harry opened his eyes to see Agil hurrying across the platform to where he was still half hanging off the side. The eleven year old could see that the older man was crying as well and that sent another lance of pain through his heart because Agil never cried. Harry didn't want to believe that two of his only friends were dead but if Agil was grieving, then he knew that there was nothing that could be done to bring the two teens back.

It was at that moment that the unthinkable happened.

Agil had just knelt down in front of Harry and reached out to help him the rest of the way up onto the platform when the room lit up with dozens of system warnings as the players inside the room began vanishing in a wave of white light that swept out from the center of the platform. Harry fumbled for Agil's hand as he saw several other players vanish only to gasp in horror as Agil vanished right in front of his eyes. It was too much for the eleven year old wizard and he threw his head back and let out an anguished scream of sheer rage and grief over the unexpected loss of the man that had been his first ever friend before he'd become the father of his heart.

The entire room began shaking apart that that point and Harry didn't even bother trying to save himself as he slid back off the platform. He crashed down hard on top of his shield before the floor of the dungeon room shattered beneath him but Harry didn't even register the physical pain he felt because his heart was still shattering into millions of pieces. As the world around him broke apart, Harry screamed a second time and this time his magic exploded outwards to sweep through the world that had been his home for two years.

His unspoken desire to save both his home and his friends causing his magic to assimilate each and every piece of unraveling code it encountered as it swept through Aincrad at the speed of light (his friends already saved, though he didn't know it).

Harry then began to experience the agony of having his soul forcefully removed from the virtual world in which it had been confined for the past two years as his magic sought to save him once more (this time to prevent his soul from being dismantled by the server that was systematically deleting the original program from the server); dragging his soul back to his frozen body with him kicking and screaming the entire way.

The last Harry saw of the world of Ken no Sekai were the words Game Over hanging in the sky above the shattered remains of Aincrad before he knew no more.

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**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Hajimari no Machi – Starting City or Town of Beginnings  
Ken no Sekai – Sword Art Online

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
Experience Points – the points earned for each quest completed and each monster killed  
Guild – group of players that work together for a common goal  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
KoB – **K**nights **o**f the **B**lood (the name of another in-game guild)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
Party – a group of two or more individuals that work together for a period of time or a set task  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

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Harry's Game Data/Stats (End of Game):

**Classification:** Indefinable Immortal Object  
**Level:** 82  
**HP:** \- System Error: HP Incalculable  
**Col:** 1,503,345

**Main Equipment:**

Dragon Fang Dirk – 15 inch white Blade, Leather Wrapped Steel Hilt  
Dragon Scale Shield – Lightweight Shield: 2 foot tall, 1 foot wide, made from Frost Dragon Scale  
Dragon Bone Shovel – Virtually indestructible shovel used for digging traps  
Diamond/Dragon Wire – Razor sharp wire that is indestructible and can cut through almost anything  
Light Armor – Lightweight Armor: Chest/Back Plate, Arm Guards, Shin Guards, Open-faced Helm (seldom worn), made from a combination of Mossy &amp; Sandy Wyvern Scales  
Diamond Cloth Gloves – Sturdy, indestructible gloves that protect his hands from the Diamond Wire  
Diamond Cloth Boots – Sturdy, indestructible boots that make little to no noise and protect his feet from the Diamond Wire as well as from piercing attacks

**Skill Slots:** 16 (four extra slots carried over from Beta Test)  
**Equipped Skills:** (Basic 1-250 pts, Advanced 251-500 pts, Proficient 501-750 pts, Expert 751-999 pts, &amp; Master 1000 pts)

Acrobatics – 1000  
Blade Throwing – 0749  
Detection – 1000  
Extended Weight Limit – 0912  
Fishing – 1000  
Hiding – 1000  
Light Shield Equip – 0836  
Light Metal Equip – 0821  
Listening – 1000  
Night Vision – 1000  
One Handed Sword – 0906  
Parry – 0875  
Searching – 1000  
Sprint – 1000  
Tracking – 1000  
Trapping – 1000

**Unarmed Skills:**

Escape – 1000  
Camping – 1000  
Navigation – 0984  
Scouting – 1000  
Research – 0865  
Magic – - System Error: Mastery Incalculable

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**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	9. Perception

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Nine: Perception

_Wednesday, July 28, 2021 8:00 AM_

Tucked deep within the mountains of Scotland, in a hidden valley near a rather unique and antiquated village that does not exist on any 'normal' map, sits an old castle. The castle had been converted into a school for young magicals over a thousand years earlier and christened Hogwarts after the flowers one of the school's four founders cherished. The village below the castle was called Hogsmeade and was the only all wizarding village that remained within the United Kingdom.

Seated behind an enormous desk, high in one of the many towers of Hogwarts, was an old wizard with a crooked nose, long white hair, and a longer white beard. The man wore bright red robes covered with rampant gold lions and gold trim, high heeled red leather boots, a red and gold pointed wizard's hat, and a pair of half-moon glasses behind which sat a pair of vibrant blue eyes that twinkled incessantly. This wizard was Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore; current Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, Order of Merlin (First Class), and Grand Sorcerer.

Albus Dumbledore was, above all else, a very influential man who did his best to guide the wizarding world despite being spread thin between the three highly demanding jobs he'd been roped into taking through the years (only one of which he'd actually wanted). Luckily, two of the three positions were ones that could be dealt with from a distance for the most part and on a quarterly basis; allowing the man to focus most of his energy into running the school that had become his home many decades earlier.

Over the past ten years, Albus had often allowed his thoughts to turn to the young child that he felt he'd abandoned to a hard life (it would be a life without magic, after all) in an effort to save him from a harder life and prepare him for his destiny. Today, just three days before said child's eleventh birthday, was one such time as the young boy in question would soon make his long awaited return to the wizarding world in order to start his magical education. Like each of the previous times he'd dwelled on the child, Albus wondered if his decision to leave little Harry Potter on the doorstep of his only surviving family so that the muggle family might raise him until he was ready to shoulder his responsibilities had been the right choice.

Today, Albus would finally receive an answer to that question and it would not be the answer he hoped to receive.

Several floors below the venerable old wizard in a sparsely decorated office, Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts, Head of House Gryffindor, Professor of Transfiguration, Cat Animagus, and avid Quidditch fan was busy filling out, addressing, and sending off letters of invitation to this year's crop of new students in addition to the booklists for all returning students. Minerva had also questioned Albus's decision all those years ago. She'd spent the past ten years hounding Albus for confirmation that young Harry was growing up healthy and happy despite her belief that the family he'd been left with the night his parents had been murdered were the 'worst sort of muggles imaginable'.

Minerva would have preferred to raise the child herself; the stern witch had been very fond of both little Harry's mother and father. She had bowed to Albus's wishes on the matter though; her faith and trust in the older wizard strong enough for him to believe he knew what he was doing. Yet, despite Albus's reassurances that Harry was growing up 'just fine', Minerva feared that things had not been easy for the son of two of her favorite lions. She knew that Lily and her sister had had a falling out after Lily had been accepted into Hogwarts; she'd spent many a night comforting the young witch over her sister's spiteful words and hurtful actions during Lily's seven years at the school.

Minerva feared that the bad blood between their sisters would see poor Harry bearing the brunt of Petunia's hate (she had long ago learned that some people could never let go of their grudges and that children often made convenient targets for adults because they weren't always strong enough to fight back). Part of her also feared that Harry would end up with an attitude far worse than his father's early selfish and immature attitude due to the way his relatives had catered to their son's whims the one time she'd observed the family.

She couldn't decide which would be worse; a spoil rotten brat that believed the world should cater to his every whim or an introverted and downtrodden waif that flinched at his own shadow.

When the owl assigned to deliver young Harry Potter's invitation for the coming school year refused to deliver the letter, the Deputy Headmistress had immediately brought the matter to Albus with a demand for him to get to the bottom of things. Additional attempts were made to deliver the letter but none of the school's postal owls would take the letter. Albus had then given the task to his beloved phoenix only for the bird to trill out a mournful song as he turned the school invitation to ash before burying his head beneath his wing and weeping (a terrible sign indeed for phoenixes rarely ever wasted tears on something as trivial as emotions).

Certain that there must be some sort of mistake, Albus had Minerva draw up a new invitation and sent Rubeus Hagrid (Hogwarts' Gamekeeper, Keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts, and half giant) to personally deliver the standard invitation to the child; the large man was a trusted staff member that was intimidating enough to get answers out of the Dursleys but gentle enough not to frighten Harry in the process. Hagrid also knew exactly where the Dursleys lived; information that very few people within the magical world had access to.

Hagrid had left just twenty minutes after Fawkes had torched the first letter and was expected to be gone for the rest of the day; the gentle giant also entrusted to take young Harry to Diagon Alley in order to purchase his school supplies (Hagrid was the ideal bodyguard, after all, despite not being a fully qualified wizard). It was therefore something of a shock for Albus when the groundskeeper burst back into his office in a fine fury barely an hour after he'd left; the door breaking under the force Hagrid had applied to open it.

"He's gone, Professor! The ruddy muggles said they never found a child on their porch," Hagrid wailed as he marched up to the desk and slammed his fists down on it, cracking the magnificent piece of furniture in his fury. "They claimed they didn't even know who I was talkin' about!"

"Hagrid, calm yourself, I'm certain the Dursleys were just trying to protect their nephew and that it was all just a big misunderstanding. The devices I have tied to the wards indicate that the wards are as strong as ever and Arabella has sent me reports through the years of seeing the boy on a number of occasions. I will send Severus along to clear things up in your place; seeing the face of an old acquaintance will undoubtedly reassure young Harry's relatives that the boy is in no danger from us."

Hagrid was mollified and Albus ushered the much calmer man out of his office before contacting Severus Snape, the resident Head of House Slytherin, Professor of Potions, former Death Eater and sourpuss extraordinaire (well known and well feared by all students not in Slytherin and even a few that were). The younger wizard had balked at being forced to fetch 'that blasted Potter brat' from his relatives but eventually capitulated when Albus reminded him that boy in question had an important part to play in the future. Once the irritated Potions Master had left to attend to the matter, Albus took the time to repair the door and his desk before returning to his duties; Harry Potter once more pushed to the back of his mind now that the child would be taken care of by one of his trusted underlings.

Albus was therefore not prepared for Severus to return two hours later with the news that Harry Potter had vanished and as far as the Dursley family _and _Arabella Figg were concerned; the child had never existed in the first place. Severus confirmed that he'd scanned their memories and found evidence that the Dursleys' and Figg's memories had been tampered with (because of the holes) but that he couldn't pinpoint when it had happened, who had done it, or why it had been done in the first place. He also said that there had been no sign of the child anywhere within the house but that there was an unusually high concentration of magic behind the wall beneath the staircase that he'd been unable to dispel.

It was at that moment that the venerable headmaster knew he could no longer delegate the matter of Harry Potter to his subordinates; things had just gone from troublesome to worrisome quite unexpectedly.

Albus gathered together a group of witches and wizards to help him get to the bottom of the mysterious disappearance of Harry Potter. Included in that group was Poppy Pomfrey (the school's Mediwitch), Minerva, Severus, Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody (an old friend of Dumbledore's and a veteran auror with the Ministry of Magic), Filius Flitwick (the Head of House Ravenclaw, Professor of Charms, former Dueling Champion, and a competent Master Warder), and Hagrid. The group of seven magicals portkeyed into Arabella Figg's backyard and immediately split up in order to investigate the disappearance of young Mr. Potter.

Madam Pomfrey went to check on Arabella and see if she could break the memory charms that had been placed on the old squib. Minerva headed for the local primary school in order to find out when Harry had last been seen in class (where she'd learn that the blood wards had prevented any of the teachers or staff from taking notice of the child and therefore had no records of him at all). Hagrid would remain with Arabella and Pomfrey in order to keep watch on the two women and so he was on hand in case they needed him. And Severus would lead the rest of them over to the Dursley's residence so that they might track down any clues as to when Harry had vanished and if he had left willingly or if he'd been taken by force.

The search ended the moment Alastor pushed his way into the house passed an indignant Petunia Dursley; the grizzled old auror had immediately spotted the missing child sealed behind the wall under the staircase when he swept the house using the magical eye that had earned him the nickname 'Mad-Eye'. Albus, Filius, and Alastor immediately set to dismantling the wards that had sealed the child behind the wall while Severus was sent to collect Minerva and Madam Pomfrey now that the missing child had been found.

It took them over twelve hours to drop the blood wards that had hidden the door to the cupboard and another six hours to break through the unexpectedly potent accidental magic that had sealed the door from the inside. Once they had the door open, the wizards were quite confused by what they were seeing; the eleven year old had been hooked up to some weird helmet thing that was connected to an unfamiliar machine. The most troubling thing, aside from the evidence that the cupboard looked well lived in, was the fact that everything in the small room was covered with at least two years worth of dust; including a much too small and frail looking Harry Potter.

The worst of the news came when Madam Pomfrey proclaimed that Harry's body had been forced into magical stasis a year and a half earlier (resulting in his already stunted growth being stunted further), his soul was not inside of his body, and Harry's magic (what little of it remained with his body) in combination with the last remnants of the blood wards was actively linking the child to the strange machine. In fact, the machine was so saturated in Harry's magic that it was no longer being powered by electricity (his magic acting as a source of energy for the device) and disconnecting him from the machine could potentially damage the child's magical core due to how the magic circulated between the machine and Harry's body.

That was on top of the obvious neglect and malnutrition that the child had suffered from during the weeks leading up to the child's body entering stasis.

Albus had aged decades by the end of the report and the other adult magicals present looked sickened (even Severus found it difficult to be disdainful of a child that looked half dead and obviously neglected). Minerva was hopping mad beneath her distress though and Albus knew he'd be forced to face her ire (and possibly her wand) once Harry had been transferred to a safe and secure location (preferably within Hogwarts). He knew he would deserve whatever the younger witch sent his way as he now had undeniable proof that he'd made a serious mistake in trusting the Dursleys to raise the boy hero that had toppled the dark wizard Voldemort at the height of his reign of terror.

It would take another two days to prepare a private room for Harry near Madam Pomfrey's office and the school's Infirmary and to secure transportation for the child, the few belongings he owned, and the muggle equipment that was some how sustaining his life in conjunction with the child's magic. Something that had involved more than a few arguments from the older two Dursleys once they discover that Harry (a child that they had absolutely no knowledge of) had been in possession of Dudley's long lost gaming console.

Albus had left the details of housing and transporting the child to the others as he spent his time gaining custody of Mr. Potter and keeping word of the child's current condition from leaking to the wrong people. The old wizard wished he could prosecute the Dursleys for their obvious neglect of their nephew but because they had no memory of Harry (aside from those involving the removal of the child) he couldn't even prove that they were responsible for the child's current condition; even if there was no doubt in his mind that they were.

If Harry ever woke up, then he could get the proof he needed from the child; providing that Harry had retained all of his memories. They couldn't check until the child woke up though, because using Legilimency on a sleeping or unconscious child could potentially damage the child's mind. There was also the fact that the child's mind was currently preserved by a powerful stasis ward which meant that they wouldn't have been able to pull up any memories even if it had been safe to read the mind of a sleeping child.

Once Harry's body (frozen empty shell that it was) had been settled into a private room near the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey began preparing for the day when the child would hopefully wake up. This mainly involved installing a potions cabinet in the child's room and stocking the cabinet with multiple doses of nutritional potions, pain potions, general healing draughts, calming potions, sleeping potions, and a number of other potions designed to counteract the negative effects of long-term stasis spells, long-term malnutrition and neglect, and stabilize a person's magical core due to disruption of the soul. With the help of Minerva, the healer also dug through the castle's lost and found for a couple of outfits that would fit the child after discovering that Harry had owned nothing but ill-fitting hand me downs that had belonged to his older, fatter cousin.

Once those preparations had been completed, there was nothing else to be done for the child until he woke aside from monitoring his body around the clock for any signs that Harry's soul had returned to his body and the stasis preserving his body had been lifted.

By the end of August, most of those that were aware of Harry's current condition had almost lost all hope that the child would ever wake (many of them believing that he was far too gone after his soul had been missing from his body for nearly two years). Albus's health had taken a steep nosedive in the aftermath and he'd willingly stepped down from his position as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot; passing the title to his former Assistant Chief Warlock, Tiberius Ogden. He'd considered resigning as Supreme Mugwump as well but hesitated to disconnect himself from the international scene while he knew Voldemort was still out there some where biding his time until he was strong enough to rise again.

When September first rolled around and the students returned to the castle, rumors about the missing Harry Potter (who the wizarding world had known should have started Hogwarts this year) were flying fast and thick both inside and outside of the school. A statement was released to the press that same day declaring that Harry had been moved into seclusion for health reasons earlier in the summer and that more information would be released at a later date. Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge had confronted Albus about the whereabouts of the missing Boy-Who-Lived (Harry's unofficial but widely accepted title in the wizarding world) but the Headmaster rebuffed the Minister as was his right as the child's newly confirmed legal guardian.

Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and still Harry showed no signs of waking.

It wasn't until just over an hour before noon on November seventh of the year twenty-twenty-one when Madam Pomfrey was alerted to a change in Mr. Potter's condition. The school healer had dropped what she was doing at the time and immediately hurried to Harry's room where she found the magical stasis preserving Harry's body rapidly breaking down and the child going into convulsions as his body and magic struggled to cope with reanimating the billions of cells that made up his body. At the same time, the monitoring charms that had been placed on the boy indicated that his soul was attempting to return to his body.

The process would take close to forty-eight hours to complete; eight times longer than it had taken for his soul to be moved out and his body preserved (not that the Mediwitch knew that).

Madam Pomfrey had needed to restart Harry's heart a total of eighteen times during the process, treat the numerous injuries that had mysteriously appeared during the first six hours, and administer over fifty potions. The unexplained injuries had healed into scars by the time the ordeal was over bar the rather nasty hole that went all the way through his right shoulder just below the collarbone; a wound that proved rather difficult to heal (as if it had been made with dark magic). The healer tried reducing or completely erasing the new scars but they were resistant to all healing magic, which was rather tragic because they were very painful looking and some of them would be difficult to cover up.

There was what looked like a bite mark from a large animal of some kind on the back of his left ankle. Then there were two long lines that started several inches above right knee on either side of his right thigh and twisted around his leg twice before ending at his right ankle. Next there were several faint crisscrossed gashes and circles on the back of his neck, across the top of his shoulders and the upper half of his back, and down both arms. There was also the thick line that ran from between his middle and ring fingers on the back of his left hand down below the thumb before wrapping around the underside of the wrist.

And then there was what the healer considered the worst of the scars; the two claw marks down the left side of his face starting somewhere beneath the helmet he wore, crossing down over the left eye (just barely missing the eye itself) and ending nearly at his chin.

After Harry had been stabilized once more, the magic running the muggle machine connected to the child withdrew back into the child's core and the machine immediately ceased to function. Madam Pomfrey was quick to remove the helmet from the child's head to find his once inky black hair now had two crisp snow-white patches where the scars on his face ran beneath his hairline. The contrast was rather startling and drew even more attention to the two scars on his face. The lightning bolt scar that had become famous in the wizarding world, in contrast, was nothing more than a thin faded line sitting above Harry's right eyebrow that was easy to miss if you didn't know it was there.

It was at that point that Madam Pomfrey sent an update on the child's condition to those that were aware of his presence in the castle. The healer had been unreachable during the forty-eight hours it had taken for the stasis spell to break down completely and for his soul to settle back to where it belonged on top of the additional sixteen hours it had taken to completely stabilize the child. Minerva would be the first to arrive on the scene and the stern witch would keep watch over the recovering wizard for a few hours while Poppy got some much needed rest.

Like Madam Pomfrey, Minerva had been appalled by the scars that had mysteriously appeared on the much too young child lying on the bed and Albus would receive a second blistering lecture (and more than a few painful hexes to tender and unmentionable places) from the Scottish witch the moment another took her place beside the child. Two hours after Minerva sat down to watch over the child, Harry slipped into a healing coma as his magic worked overtime to finish healing his body with the aide of the numerous potions flowing through his veins.

During that time, Harry's magic was also expanding his magical core to accommodate the magical growth that he had undergone and to incorporate the fundamental changes that his magic had undergone as it systematically assimilated the complex programming code of the game during the past two years (the majority of the coding taken during the collapse of Aincrad). The magically implanted NERDLES at the base of his skull continued to feed information into Harry's sleeping brain as Harry's magic now used the small device as a bridge between his soul, his magical core, and his brain.

Five days would pass before Harry woke from his magic induced coma and Madam Pomfrey worked diligently during that time to heal the damage that his magic and the potions had been unable to heal on its own (bar the magic resistant scars and the slowly healing wound in his shoulder). At the end of those five days, Harry looked far healthier than he had at any point since he'd been found back on his eleventh birthday, though he still looked painfully thin and frail. The fact that he didn't look a day older than eight (and even that was a bit of a stretch considering how short and scrawny he was) only made his appearance all that more tragic when one took in the numerous scars that decorated his body.

Not even Snape (who had once been determined to hate the child of his biggest rival) could dredge up enough hate to insult the child or complain about the attention he was receiving in light of what he must have suffered.

Sadly, Harry's awakening was not the happy occasion that all of those involved had imagined it would be as it was painfully obvious that there had been some mental and emotional scarring due to whatever ordeal the child had suffered through to tear his soul from its rightful home and force his magic to preserve his body. Expected as that scarring was, none of the adults watching over the young wizard were quite prepared for the child's insistence that he was trapped in some kind of game, his staunch refusal to believe roughly ninety percent of the information they gave him, or his casual dismissal of their very humanity.

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**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	10. Awakening

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Ten: Awakening

_Sunday, November 14, 2021 3:43 PM_

Harry returned to consciousness in the blink of an eye.

One second he knew nothing and the next he was laying in darkness on a comfortable bed feeling as if he'd been worked over by a Boss Monster recently.

It only took a moment for his memory of the final moments of Aincrad to slam into his brain and when it did, Harry let out a rage filled scream of grief over the memory of all he'd just lost. When his scream died down into sobs, Harry reached up with both hands and covered his face (ignoring the searing pain that cut through his right shoulder with the movement) as he saw again Kirito's shocked disbelief when Asuna shattered in death, Kirito's face filled with grief, desperation, and rage (the teen so utterly broken due to Asuna's death) when he killed Kayaba before both man and teen shattered, and the obvious grief on Agil's face just before the man vanished from right in front of him.

Numbness settled over Harry as he ran his hands over his face and through his hair (still ignoring the pain of moving his right arm) before he sat up and gazed blankly at the unfamiliar stone walls and antique furniture of the room he found himself in. A glance upwards revealed his golden HP bar (currently sitting dangerously low, which would explain why he felt so tired) and green curser still floating above his head and he let out a resigned sigh as he opened his Menu in the hopes that he could find out where he had ended up.

Harry couldn't resist torturing himself with a brief check of his Friend List to see all five of his friends grayed out (the color had come to signify the death of the players whereas prior to being trapped in the game, the color had just indicated the players were offline) and the grief drowned him a second time as he stared at the evidence that his friends were gone.

"_Agil,_" Harry sobbed brokenly, the loss of the man he'd come to see as a father hurting the most because the man had always seemed so strong. It didn't help that he never even told the man how he truly saw him or how much he'd come to care for him in the two years they'd known each other. "_Damn you, Kayaba! Give me back my father! I need him. I need them all. They were all I had._"

The sound of the door opening followed by a soft gasp pulled Harry from his grief and he glanced up to find a middle aged woman dressed in an old fashioned maroon and white healer's smock and hat. Reaching up with one hand, Harry closed out his Player Menu and warily studied the unfamiliar woman before he glanced up to note that she was an NPC according to the green cursor surrounded by a simple green ring floating above her head. Her presence only confirmed what he'd been trying to deny right from the start; he'd been ripped from SAO and thrust into some other VRMMORPG environment instead of waking up in his body.

"_I wonder if this means that my relatives really did kill me off,_" Harry apathetically mused out loud as he watched the woman bustle forward once she got over her shock.

"Oh by the blessing of the Lady of the Lake, it is good to see you awake at last, Mr. Potter," the woman declared as she pulled out a stick and began waving it over Harry. "We'd begun to fear that you would never wake up."

"_Who are you and where am I?_" Harry asked in Japanese out of habit, his mind not yet registering the fact that she was speaking English or that she'd used his actual last name.

"I'm sorry, dear, what was that? I'm afraid I didn't understand a word of what it was you were asking me."

This time, Harry picked up on the fact that she was using English and his wariness increased since there had been very few players that had known that he spoke English. The fact that it was an NPC using English only heightened his unease because the system shouldn't have that kind of information. Harry frowned after a moment though as it occurred to him that he might have been shunted onto the nearest server when Aincrad self-destructed; which for him would mean an English server. Since he was, as far as he knew, the only British player that had been trapped inside of the game; or at least the only player located within the British Isles as the game had not been sold outside of Japan (his uncle's purchase the only exception as far as he knew).

"Mr. Potter…?"

Harry continued to ignore the NPC Healer as he reopened his Menu and flipped through the options. When he didn't find any more information on what game he'd been thrust into, he switched back to his Player Stats in order to see what level he was currently at, only to frown when he saw there were now two pages to his Stats Page. The first page was new and it depicted his Stats for the current game (most of which were currently blank) while the second page held a list of his SAO Stats at the end of the game. Thinking of SAO only brought the grief back though and he closed out the Menu as tears slipped down his face; he no longer felt curious enough to determine where he stood in this new game.

"Is there something wrong, Mr. Potter? Are you in any pain?"

"Just leave me alone," Harry rasped tiredly, his heart in far too much pain to deal with what he was certain was nothing but another piece of stupid code.

The woman pursed her lips at the rudeness before her gaze filled with pity and regret and Harry just stared at her apathetically while the tears continued to course down his face. Eventually, she took the hint and backed out of the room and Harry gave into the despair, loneliness, and grief as he curled up on the bed and bawled his eyes out. Hours later, after he'd finally cried himself dry; he just lay there staring at the stone wall without really seeing it as the memory of his world ending played over and over again in his mind. It wasn't that he really cared that Aincrad was gone at this point, home though it had been to him for two years.

No, it was the loss of his friends and his self-claimed father that tore at him.

He'd give anything to be back in Algade helping Agil with the shop.

After a while, his solitude was intruded upon once more by the same nurse and an ancient old man with a white beard that looked nearly long enough for him to trip over. Harry flicked his eyes up to determine the man's classification before he returned his eyes to the wall once he realized that the man was also an NPC in the new game and studiously ignored both man and woman; they were not important.

"It does this old heart good to see you awake at last, my boy," the old man stated as he sat down in the chair that was positioned beside the bed.

Harry flicked his gaze to the old man once more before he simply rolled over and ignored the NPC and the spike of pain that his new position sent through his injured shoulder. The man sighed and Harry hoped that that meant that he would leave. Unfortunately, it didn't as Harry soon learned when the man began speaking again.

"Allow me to introduce myself, I am Albus Dumbledore and I owe you an apology, Mr. Potter… Harry, I did you a great disservice…"

Harry bolted out of the bed in pure panic over the use of that name; he had still not registered the fact that the nurse had used his real last name several times earlier. Hearing this old man casually use his first name though, a name he'd never entered into the system at any point or even given to his friends really freaked him out.

"Who are you and how did you get that name?" Harry demanded as his back connected with the cold stone wall while he reached for the dirk that no longer hung from his right hip. Harry didn't even bother waiting for an answer as he opened up his Menu after he'd failed to find his weapon. Instead of equipping himself with the missing dirk though, he began rapidly shifting through the various pages in a desperate search for any clue as to how the server might have found that information to plug into whatever game it was that he'd been forced into.

As his fingers flew through the pages, he muttered under his breath in Japanese, "_This isn't happening, this can't be happening. How can the system hack that information? Did they steal that information from my old school? Could whoever created this new game have gone to my aunt and uncle's house to take control of my body? Is that why I didn't wake up in my body? How did they know I would appear on this server though? Was I shunted here purposefully? That still doesn't rule out the possibility that I am dead either._"

"_Potter-kun, please calm down,_" Dumbledore urged in Japanese, making Harry's fingers freeze above his Menu as he peered over the semi-transparent page to meet the man's blue eyes. "_You have nothing to be afraid of and you are most assuredly not dead. I had you brought here…_"

"_You had no right! Send me back! I have to find my father and the others, the game ended so they should have been released but with the system deleting itself, they might have gotten stuck and I can't just leave them to die. I won't._"

"_I am afraid that I am not following you, my boy. Your parents are dead; they have been gone for ten years now. This is not a game and I can not in good conscience send you back to the place you were before. As I had been saying earlier, I did you a great disservice in leaving you with your aunt's family but, in my defense, I had wrongly assumed that they would treat you like family because you were part of their family. I had you brought here so that you might heal and so that you can learn about your heritage._"

"_Oh, you're good, I'll give you that,_" Harry countered with a frown as he casually dismissed the man's words and returned to searching through the menu functions. "_You have just enough information to make the story sound believable but that was probably the way you were programmed. Makes me wonder who it was that went to so much effort just to try and convince me that this is where I belong. You aren't fooling me though and you'll never keep me here; I won't allow it. All I have to do is find the backdoor to this stupid game and then I'm out of here._"

"Mr. Potter, you are not trapped inside of any game. You are home now," Dumbledore insisted as he switched back to English as if to emphasize his point. "I understand that you have been through a trying ordeal and that it will take time for you to accept the changes that took place while you were gone, so I will give you some time to adjust before we sit down and discuss your future."

Harry watched the old man exit the room, not for a moment believing anything that the man had told him. Harry knew better; if he'd really returned to his body he would not still be in pain from his partially healed shoulder, he'd not still be covered in the scars he'd received in SAO (he could see the ones one his arms and wrist just as plain as day), there would be no Menu available, and he would either be locked inside of his cupboard under the stairs or he'd have woken up in a hospital with the Nerve Gear still strapped in place on his head.

"Come on, Mr. Potter, let's get you back into bed," the nurse instructed as she entered Harry's line of sight; the eleven year old had completely forgotten about the woman in the wake of dealing with the weird old man.

Harry considered ignoring her but upon further reflection realized that he was still exhausted and he'd been shivering due to his see-sawing emotions and the chill air that seemed to plague all castles for some time without realizing it. Once under the covers again, Harry continued to flip through the Menu; this time he checked his Inventory and noted that he still had everything he'd taken with him to that final battle.

He also found that he'd picked up four Items from the battle of the Skull Reaper; one of the Reaper's Scythes, the Reaper's Stinger (Harry's dried blood still coating the tip where it had pierced Harry's right shoulder), an Item called the Cloak of Mourning (it boosted one's offensive capabilities), and something that was called the Reaper's Crown (Harry had no clue what this one was). All four Items had been shunted to him automatically when the game had ended because he'd been the last one left who'd faced the Skull Reaper in battle after the others had begun vanishing.

Sighing, Harry closed out the Menu and curled up with his pillow as he cried himself to sleep still missing Agil and the others.

* * *

_Friday, November 19, 2021 8:15 AM_

Five days later, Harry sat on the same bed dressed in a fairly decent set of secondhand clothes that included a pair of black slacks, a white button down shirt over a white t-shirt, a gray woolen vest, a simple black tie, open fronted black robes, polished black dress shoes, and a sling for his right arm to support his mostly healed but still weak shoulder. The clothes had been given to him by the nurse earlier that morning. Today he was to be taken to acquire the supplies he would need to muddle through this new game in the hopes that the sooner he cleared the game, the sooner he could find a way back to Aincrad's server so that he could find Agil and the others.

The eleven year old studiously ignored the possibility that the server had been permanently shut down already.

Dumbledore had returned the previous evening along with four new adults (whom were introduced as Professor Minerva McGonagall, Professor Severus Snape, Professor Pomona Sprout, and Professor Filius Flitwick) plus the nurse (whose name he finally learned was Madam Poppy Pomfrey) to explain where he was and why he was there. The more Harry learned, the more he became disturbed by this new game. Someone had gone through a considerable amount of trouble to create a game that was attempting to supplant reality in his mind.

Dumbledore, who was apparently his in-game guardian according to the NPC, knew just enough facts about Harry's real life to make his story appear real but it was twisted just enough to scream fake to Harry; the eleven year old not realizing that it was his facts that had been twisted by the lies the Dursleys had fed him for eight long years.

First of all, there was the fact that Dumbledore claimed to have known Harry's birth parents but the man insisted that they had been killed by some evil wizard with a dorky name instead of in a car crash. That _might_ have been believable if not for the fact that the man had gone on to insist that the evil wizard had tried to kill Harry as well but had failed. That instead of Harry being killed, something inside of Harry had weakened and defeated the big bad dark guy and sent him fleeing into the night to lick his wounds.

Now, Harry was proud of the abilities he'd cultivated and he knew that there had been few solo players within SAO that could claim to have defeated a dragon on their own let alone four of the fiercest in the game (the three wyverns no where near as powerful as the dragons) aside from himself but not even he was egotistical enough to claim credit for defeating a powerful and powerfully evil dark wizard at the tender age of one. Besides, his aunt and uncle had been most insistent that his parents had died in a car crash because they'd been out drinking and doing drugs. It also seemed far more plausible to have gotten his old lightning bolt scar in a car crash than because he'd been hit by an unblockable killing 'curse' that he somehow survived.

So that was a huge strike against the man's believability; babies don't defeat the bad guys in _any_ story. They _might_ be orphaned and grow up to beat the bad guys out of revenge but they had to be trained through a series of deadly trials to gain the strength first; even Harry knew that much about the heroes in any story (and he hadn't been allowed to read that many stories least he 'get ideas' about his own unnaturalness). Yet another strike against his supposed guardian was the fact that the man kept claiming that both of Harry's parents and Harry himself were magicals; all of them part of some super secret society of sorcerers and sorceresses.

Harry had been nine when he'd been trapped in SAO and in all the memories he could recall from his life before he'd been trapped inside of the game, he'd never once seen any evidence that he was anything other than an unwanted and unloved boy and a burden to his relatives. There had been no turning any one's wig blue, no unexplained trips to the top of the school building, and no talkative pythons being released from the zoo.

His relatives had called him a freak and blamed everything on him but there was evidence enough that his 'freakishness' had been anything that stood out differently from the Dursleys and most of that was explainable by normal standards. His hair refused to sit neatly, he was too small for his age (mostly the fault of the Dursleys anyway), he had never been sick with the flu (or any other common illness), he was smarter than Dudley (an easy feat), and he'd been dumped on their doorstep by someone instead of being placed into foster care or in an orphanage after his parents died.

No, the only place Harry had ever known magic to exist was inside of SAO and he knew that the magic there had been created by the computer coding that was the building blocks of the entire program. Even the so called magic that Harry had inexplicably unlocked within the game behaved much as one would expect from a computer game and no different in Harry's mind than the unique Skill of Duel Wielding that Kirito had unlocked at some point in the game. Kayaba had gifted little kernels of extras like that to a small handful of players within the game so it was to be expected that some form of magic had existed there above and beyond the magic that was the world of SAO.

The final strike against Dumbledore's credibility had been the claim that Harry's body had been locked into something called a magical stasis for two years in order to explain away the reason why he still looked like a nine year old (well truth be told, he looked more like an eight year old but that was because he was still so short and scrawny). Cryogenics was a field of study that Klein had once regaled Harry with when they'd gone out to celebrate the defeat of the Boss Monster on the forty-first floor. Klein had insisted that scientists had been researching for a way to preserve the human body for over a hundred years as a way of defeating time itself and if science couldn't prevent true aging, then how could magic?

And what reason would magic have to save someone like him when there were so many other people out there that he thought would have been more worthy of magical healing and protection; Asuna, Kirito, Agil, Klein, and Lisbeth coming to mind.

Coupled with that was the fact that Dumbledore kept insisting that Harry's ability to feel pain was proof positive that he was not trapped in some game or illusion; Harry had been feeling pain and bleeding inside of a game since he'd reached level thirty. Agil had once suggested that because Harry hadn't properly had his NERDLES implanted that the device was malfunctioning and that the pain he felt had been the result. Agil's explanation was far more believable than Dumbledore's; even if it didn't explain why Harry bled when injured during a fight but it had explained the pain and possibly why Items seemed more realistic when in Harry's hands.

The other five NPCs (the nurse and the four adults he'd learned were some kind of teachers) had unsurprisingly offered their assertions that the story was true, each one of them either claiming to have personally taught his parents how to use their magic or claiming to have gone to school with them. That was only to be expected though since they were all part of the same game and apparently were all programmed to work out of the same business, or in this case the same school.

Learning that he would be trapped within the castle for at least seven years had been terrifying but after a while he began to wonder if there would be pre-programmed time skips in order to speed the game along. It just didn't seem realistic enough to force players to play through each and every day of a seven year education in magical arts. Then again, the more he learned about the game, the more he began to wonder if it was some kind of on-line prison for criminals in order to save money on housing them since it would be easier to lock a murderer up in a hospital bed and let his brain occupy itself than it would be to lock up the man himself where he could harm others out in the real world if he escaped.

It seemed like the kind of place that the Dursleys would have sent Harry to in any event; especially upon learning he'd been the one to steal the gaming equipment from the rubbish bin.

And so, here he was, waiting for the staff member that had been assigned to guide him through the first steps of the game so that he might start working his way through the required quests in order to beat the game. He'd spent every second of the past fives days hunting through his Menu for a backdoor out but hadn't been able to find one, so it was either allow them to lock him up in some sort of virtual mental institution for refusing to cooperate or play the game until he found or made another way out.

So long as he was somewhat free to move about, he could always look for another human player in order to get more information on the game or a system door that would allow him to escape; since there was still no logout function.

So he reluctantly chose to play along in the hopes that he could find a way out.

The moment he'd resigned himself to muddling his way through yet another game, two new bars had shimmered into existence below his gold HP Bar; a green one labeled as HP and a blue one labeled as MP. A quick check of his Stat Page let him know that the original gold HP Bar was now an indication of his overall Health, the green one would track his physical health (or Hit Points), and the blue one kept track of the magic he had available (Magic Points). The amounts of all three bars were currently listed as incalculable and hinted that whatever glitch had messed up his classification and HP in SAO was still affecting him in the new game.

A knock at the door brought Harry to his feet as he turned to meet his escort who turned out to be a young woman with long, silky black hair and light brown eyes that looked to be in her early thirties. She wore black robes (that looked more like a dress on her), high heeled boots that just barely peeked out from beneath the robes, and the stereotypical witch's hat upon her head. Harry supposed she could be considered pretty and if he'd been there, Klein probably would have tried to hit on her; a thought that actually made Harry smile sadly for the briefest of moments before he gave the newest NPC in this game his full attention.

"Good morning, Mr. Potter, I am Professor Sinistra," the woman informed him as she held out her hand for Harry to shake only for her to awkwardly drop it when he ignored the hand. "I teach Astronomy here at Hogwarts and because all of my classes take place in the evenings, I was asked to escort you to Diagon Alley this morning so that you might purchase your school supplies. Do you have the supply list Professor McGonagall left with you yesterday?"

"Yes," Harry replied as he opened his Player Menu to materialize the list in question so he would have it on hand. "Will I need to worry about us running into any monsters on our journey to the market town?"

"No, I'll be apparating us directly to the entrance to Diagon Alley in order to save time and to prevent you from getting lost since you have no experience with traveling through the Floo. The only creatures you'll need to worry about around here are the ones living within the Forbidden Forest; which is why students are prohibited from exploring the forest. If you will follow me…"

Harry reluctantly accepted the automated Party Invitation that the system sent him so that even if he did get separated from his guide, he'd be able to locate her fairly quickly; which was standard procedure when starting a quest led by an NPC. As the woman led the way out of the castle, Harry allowed his eyes to take in the prison he'd potentially spend the next seven years in; taking in the animated suits of armor, floating ghosts, and moving portraits.

Harry wasn't really impressed; Aincrad had had far more magnificent buildings and an endless number of fantastical and deadly Dungeons spread throughout the entire virtual universe and each floor had held entire worlds filled equally with wonders and horrors.

* * *

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
MP – **M**agic **P**oints (Only in MaM)  
Nerve Gear – equipment created by Kayaba Akihiko (Argus); allows the user to enter FullDive  
NERDLES – **Ner**ve **D**irect **L**inkage **E**nvironment **S**ystem (a surgically implanted chip that allows the FullDive system to interface with the brain – the surgically implanted part may or may not be canon as it was something I thought seemed more logical than it just being part of the interface helmet)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
Player Stats – A list of a player's in game statistics and skills  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline  
Solo Player – a player that moves through the game alone

* * *

Harry's New Game Data/Stats Page (upon waking):

**Classification:** Unsorted  
**Level:** First Year  
**Student Rank:** -  
**Health:** Incalculable  
**HP:** Incalculable  
**MP:** Incalculable  
**Pet:** None  
**Special Titles:** -  
**Wallet:** Empty

**Main Equipment:**

Hospital Gown – Basic Clothing with no special capabilities

**Skills:** (Levels – Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Proficient, &amp; Mastered)

**Magical Knowledge:**

None

**Spell Casting:**

None

**Practical Skills:**

None

* * *

**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	11. Contrariness

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Eleven: Contrariness

_Friday, November 19, 2021 8:28 AM_

Albus stood in front of his office window staring down at the castle grounds as Aurora Sinistra led the diminutive Harry Potter off of the grounds; the young professor escorting the child to Diagon Alley so that he could purchase his school supplies. The wizard's shoulders sagged as he thought back to his interactions with the young child and felt again the weight of the mistake he'd made in placing the child with his only remaining blood relatives. A sigh escaped his lips as he wondered again what the child had experienced over the past two years while his soul had been trapped somewhere outside of his body and worried about the apparent insanity that the poor boy had developed due to the separation of body and soul.

The child's insistence that life was some sort of game he had to complete was disturbing and Dumbledore had not missed the skeptical look in Harry's eyes the night before as he'd tried to explain things properly to the boy. At the same time, the old wizard had been utterly fascinated with the mutations that Harry's magic had undergone since waking up. The child accessed his magic completely without any understanding of what it was and what it did and somehow forced it to physically manifest itself in order to interact with his environment.

Poppy had told him that the boy had vanished the clothes she'd given him that morning and then somehow made them appear on his body simply by touching the strange floating pages the boy created out of pure magic. Each time Albus found himself fascinated by the anomalies surrounding Harry Potter, the old man would feel guilt because it had been his mistakes that had led to the child's magic and mind becoming so twisted. He only prayed that Merlin and the Lady of the Lake would see fit to guide the child back to reality sometime soon or their world was doomed.

Sighing again, Albus turned away from the window as Aurora and the boy disappeared from view and returned to his desk to finish up the never ending piles of paperwork that were waiting for his attention.

* * *

_Friday, November 19, 2021 8:36 AM_

Harry coughed and shook off the nausea that had taken hold of him the moment the professor had transported them from just outside the school grounds to an empty alley in the middle of who-knew-where even as he jumped clumsily away from her. Even though the woman had frowningly proclaimed that the method of travel they had just used was similar to the Teleport function in SAO when Harry asked, he found that that couldn't be further from the truth. Harry would take teleportation over the so called apparation any day; he did not like feeling like he was being squished and stretched out through a straw.

"Are you alright, Mr. Potter?"

"I'm fine," Harry assured his soon to be professor as he shook off the last of the effects of the strange form of transport.

She nodded and pulled him over to a section of the wall directly across from the grimy back door of a pub called the Leaky Cauldron; the woman completely ignoring his discomfort with the physical contact. She then removed a wooden rod (a device that he'd learned was called a wand) from her pocket and tapped one of the stones on the wall with the tip. Watching the wall peel itself out of the way brick by brick was rather fascinating but the long winding street that had been hiding behind the wall was rather boring.

It was also fairly crowded and reminded Harry of some of the shadier parts of Hajimari no Machi where low level players sold low quality goods for high prices in the hopes of getting rich quick by tricking the more naïve players or those desperate enough not to care that they were being cheated.

"Stay close to me, child," Professor Sinistra warned in a soft whisper as she clamped a hand on his shoulder once more, causing him to tense as he disliked people he didn't really know grabbing him. "Do not give anyone your name and do not wander off on your own. Not all witches and wizards are good people and your name will stir up more trouble than we need right now."

"Got it."

"Good. Our first destination is Gringotts Bank, the large white building up ahead where the street splits," Professor Sinistra continued with a slightly louder voice as she guided Harry along the street with the hand she kept on his shoulder. "Gringotts is run by goblins and it is important that you do not insult them as they are rather unfriendly creatures that can make your life miserable should you annoy them."

"Will they attack in hordes and do they have any weaknesses that can be easily exploited if they do decide to attack us once we enter the bank? Can they be killed easily or do you need a special weapon?"

"No, they will confiscate your vault and all of your money and make your life difficult. Their only true weakness is their love for gold and treasure and their pride and you are not allowed to kill them. The last thing we need is for you to incite another goblin rebellion because you dared to attack one or more of them."

"I won't attack anyone that doesn't attack me first," Harry stated flatly as he glanced up at the witch briefly.

"Somehow that doesn't sound as reassuring as you might have meant it to be," Professor Sinistra muttered under her breath as they reached the bank and climbed up the short flight of stairs leading to the entrance. "Please remain silent while I handle matters with the goblins; if you have any questions, I will answer them once we are finished with our business at the bank."

"Yes, ma'am."

Harry's first glimpse of a goblin had him wondering if the game's monster designer had lacked any true imagination because they looked nothing like the ugly and fear inducing Grim Goblins that had been found in the dungeons on floor sixty-eight of Aincrad. In fact, aside from being rather short and stocky, having very little hair, and having grayish-brown tinged skin the goblins could have easily passed as short humans with an unusual facial structure. The sharp looking axes, pikes, and swords they carried were of far more interest to the eleven year old and Harry wondered what Agil would make of some of the heavier looking war axes.

Recalling that Agil wasn't around and would probably never have the chance to appraise any of the weapons being openly carried by the goblin guards in the bank sent another wave of grief through Harry and he almost tripped over his feet when the tears he was holding back by sheer willpower clouded his vision. It took him several minutes to get his emotions under control and once he did it was to find himself being steered down a rough tunnel to a mining cart by the professor who in turn was being led by a goblin.

If not for his inner turmoil, Harry might have appreciated the cart ride since it was the closest thing to an amusement park ride he'd ever been on. At the end of the ride, he was more than a little confused when Professor Sinistra had given him a push into the vault the goblin had opened. The woman simply told him that it was his job to collect the money he would need to buy his supplies and that it wasn't appropriate for her to enter his vault without permission. That, of course, raised the question of how and when he'd been given a vault and why there was already so much wealth tucked inside of it when he hadn't earned any money in the new game as far as he knew.

He opened his mouth to ask those questions only to recall that the professor had asked him to hold his questions until they were finished. Sighing, Harry walked up to the nearest pile of gold, silver and bronze coins and watched as they briefly shimmered before vanishing as his Inventory collected the money. He missed the gaping expression on the goblin escort's face as he opened the Menu to confirm receipt of the money in his Inventory and noted that the form of currency used in this game had not been defined and added that question to the list of questions he needed to ask the woman. Hoping the several thousand coins he'd picked up would be enough to purchase all of his supplies; Harry backed away from the remaining piles and exited the vault.

On their way back up to the lobby of the bank, Harry caught the goblin eyeing him with an unreadable expression several times and when he recalled Professor Sinistra's warnings about the goblins being unpleasant and quick to cause trouble over any insult, he shifted nervously. He worried that he might have offended the creature somehow and prayed that it was something that could be smoothed over. Recalling that Professor Sinistra had also said that gold and treasure were one of the only weaknesses that goblins had, Harry opened his Inventory and withdrew a single gold coin (still uncertain of how much it was worth) and offered the coin to the goblin once they climbed out of the cart along with a murmured thank you for his services.

Professor Sinistra bustled him out of the bank at that point, leaving behind a very confused and suspicious goblin as no wizard had ever tipped a goblin for the cart ride before (though a number of muggleborns often thanked them thinking that they'd fall over backwards for treating them with common courtesy). The goblin would then immediately dash off to see one of the managers to give his report on the strangeness that surrounded the Boy-Who-Lived. Outside of the bank, Harry was being led down the steps by an exasperated Sinistra.

"I thought I told you not to cause trouble?"

"I wasn't trying to cause trouble, the goblin was giving me funny looks and you said their weakness was gold so I gave him a piece of gold in the hopes that whatever I'd done to offend him wouldn't get me in trouble. How was I supposed to know that I wasn't supposed to do that? I never received a guide book for this stupid game so I'm walking blind here and if you want me to follow the rules, I first need to know those rules. You also told me to save my questions until we were done."

"This is not a game, child, this is life and you are going to get yourself killed or incarcerated if you don't learn to think before you act. In the mean time, ask your questions and I will do my best to answer them for you."

"Why did I already have a vault at the bank? Where did the money inside of it come from? What kind of currency are the coins supposed to be and how much are they worth? What can I expect to pay for the supplies I need and do I need to return to the bank to withdraw more money if I didn't take out enough?"

"The vault and a good portion of the money previously belonged to your parents and as their only child it now belongs to you. Some of the money was also awarded to you by the Ministry for your defeat of You-Know-Who as a child and the rest was left to you by a handful of witches and wizards upon their deaths because they'd had no remaining family and wished to give you their thanks for what you had done the night your parents died."

"Wizarding money is made up of gold galleons, silver sickles, and bronze knuts; one galleon is equal to seventeen sickles, one sickle is equal to twenty-nine knuts, and for reference one galleon is roughly equal to five pounds sterling. The total cost of your supplies should fall somewhere between thirty and fifty galleons at most, unless you waste money on useless frivolities. And yes, you will need to return to the bank if you wish to withdraw more funds."

By the time the professor finished answering Harry's questions, they'd reached their first store; a luggage store in order to purchase a trunk. Harry disliked the idea of having to carry around a trunk and had immediately questioned the store clerk about Bags of Holding instead since his Inventory was currently limited in space and mostly full with the Items that had been brought over with him from SAO. Learning that the new game had a bag with near unlimited space and no weight limits was enough to interest Harry and he readily purchased a messenger bag made from dragon hide that was a deep copper in color, lined inside with heavy canvas, and spelled with what the clerk called an Undetectable Expansion Charm, a Feather Weight Charm, and an Anti-theft Charm.

Professor Sinistra had pursed her lips and nearly scowled over Harry's stubbornness but let the purchase stand since he had paid the twelve galleons for the bag before she could intervene (seven galleons more than he'd have needed to pay for a standard school trunk). The rest of their shopping trip took about three hours (two hours longer than necessary) as Harry carefully inspected and appraised each piece of equipment before he even considered purchasing it. He refused to buy anything that would easily break after a few uses because it could get him seriously injured or it could get him killed since he wasn't certain on whether or not his status as an Immortal Object had carried over to the new game since the Player Classification on his new Stat Page for the current game was listed as unsorted.

There'd been a brief scene in the book store when Harry determinedly stood his ground in the face of the woman's disapproval over the number and types of books he'd decided to purchase that were not on the book list that had been provided for him. He refused to back down though; he needed the information the books could potentially provide if he hoped to beat this latest game and find the others. He didn't see what the big deal was anyway; it was supposedly his own money that he was spending so he should be able to decide how he was to spend that money. She finally threw her arms up in defeat and stomped away to wait for him by the door so she could take him to get his wand next.

"That is everything," Professor Sinistra declared in a tone filled with more than a little relief as Harry placed his wand in his Inventory and paid the man who ran the store (being fitted for said wand had been a rather trying experience that Harry preferred to forget). "Unless, of course, you are interested in purchasing a pet?"

"Is having a pet a requirement or a personal preference? Is there any advantage in having a pet? Are there any specific Skills required in order to obtain or raise a pet?"

"Pets are strictly optional and aside from the sentimental value they represent, most pets do not give a student any advantage over those students that don't have a pet. However, taking an owl as a pet does allow you to send and receive mail without having to depend on whether or not one of the school's owls are available to send out any letters you might wish to write. So, you might say that it is advantageous to own an owl if you intend to send out regular correspondence. The only skills required are common sense and the ability to feed your pet and clean up after it when necessary."

Five minutes later, Harry was drifting up and down the rows of cages and tanks in the Magical Menagerie while Professor Sinistra waited for him outside of the stop. He wasn't certain he really wanted an owl but the idea of having a loyal companion appealed to the lonely boy (since he had no idea how long he'd be trapped in this new game and had no intentions of befriending anyone). He was nearing the back of the store where the birds were kept when his attention was caught by a creature half hidden behind a branch in a large terrarium that was twice Harry's height and as wide as he was tall.

What little he could see of the creature was a bright iridescent scarlet in color and covered in an interesting combination of scales and feathers. As he moved closer to the glass cage, he watched as what looked like an eagle's foot covered with tiny scarlet scales and tipped with sharp silver talons languidly stretched out before disappearing beneath the bulk of the body once more. Curious, Harry leaned to the left in order to get a better look at the creature only for it to suddenly lift its head from where it had been hidden beneath another leafy branch and stare right at Harry with glittering black eyes that were filled with intelligence.

The creature had what looked like the head of an eagle covered with scarlet colored thumbnail sized scales with what looked like soft, downy feathers growing out from underneath them (much like the rest of the body). The creature's head was connected to a long sinuous and serpentine neck that vividly reminded Harry of the three wyverns he'd faced in SAO and topped with a long silver and scarlet feathered crest (similar to a cockatoo's, only much longer).

"Beautiful creature, is she not?" the store clerk declared as he stepped up beside Harry once he'd seen what had caught his attention and in the hopes of steering him towards another animal in an effort to make a sale. "She is a dwarf occamy from southern India; very rare and very difficult to catch."

"This one was hatched from the only surviving egg in a clutch of occamy eggs that had been illegally imported into the country just over a year ago. Legends state that only a powerful wizard can tame an occamy because they are drawn to powerful magic but most believe that is a myth since there have been rumors of a squib hatching out and raising a small colony of the creatures in Japan. Best set your sights on a different critter though, boy; she's a right nasty piece of work and out of your price range I would imagine."

As if to put lie to the man's declaration, the sinuous creature stretched out and slowly walked out from behind the branch that had been blocking the bulk of her body to lean against the glass as she continued to hold Harry's gaze. The little female then began to croon softly as she spread out her wings and tilted her head to the side as if to ask Harry if he liked what he saw. He took the opportunity she provided to note that she was close to two feet in length from the tip of her beak to the tip of her scarlet and silver feathered tail with her body thickening near the center where her legs met her body. Harry smiled at the creature's antics all the while wondering if it would be classified as a bird, a serpent, or a type of wyvern given the blend of body parts and structure.

"She's the most beautiful creature I have ever seen," Harry breathed as he inspected the silvery scales that ran down the creature's belly; his words and appreciating glance eliciting a crooning hum of approval and satisfaction from the occamy. "How much are you asking for her?"

"I can't in good conscience sell her to you as you are far too young to care for…"

"How much?"

"Three hundred galleons and your parents would need to be the ones to actually purchase her on your behalf."

"My parents are dead and I was given permission by a Hogwarts' professor to purchase a companion before I return to the castle in order to start my lessons. I'll take her."

"I don't think…"

"There is no need for you to think. I am here to purchase a companion and she is the companion I have chosen to purchase. I have the amount you are asking plus enough to purchase any supplies needed to care for her and that is all you need to know."

"Fine but if she claws your eyes out and dines on your heart while you scream don't come running to me for a refund," the clerk grouched irritably as he rang up the sale and irritably accepted Harry's money.

Harry ignored the NPC's dire pronouncements as he gathered up a depressingly thin guide book on how to care for his new pet, a sturdy perch for her to sit on, and a dozen white feeder rats (non-magical) after checking the guide book to see what kind of diet occamies ate. The clerk had then grabbed a travel cage and a pair of thick gloves before he unlocked the door to the cage in order to transfer the creature into the cage. The occamy dodged the man's hands and dove out of the glass enclosure before she flew herself up to Harry's left shoulder, promptly wrapped her tail around Harry's neck, and propped her head on top of Harry's head.

The clerk stared at Harry for a full minute before he shook his head and walked away muttering under his breath about insane brats and annoying creatures giving him headaches.

"You certainly made quite an impression on the man, beautiful," Harry declared with a soft laugh as he stepped outside of the store where Professor Sinistra was waiting for him.

The woman took one look at Harry's new companion and stuttered, "Th…that's not an owl!"

"Correct, she's much better than any old owl in my opinion."

"Only owls, cats, or toads are permitted as pets at the school," Professor Sinistra protested.

"I'm not returning her and if I am not allowed to keep her with me, then I will not return to the school with you. You did not mention a restriction on the type of companion I could purchase before you sent me into the store alone and she is the only companion I found suitable and I refuse to be told what kind of creature I can or can't be allowed to keep."

"I don't get paid enough to deal with your stubbornness," Professor Sinistra deadpanned as she reached up to massage her temples as if to ward off a headache. "Headmaster Dumbledore can deal with you and your new pet. One word of precaution; bring her to my classes and I will deduct house points and assign detentions as I will not allow her presence to disrupt my classes. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly, professor."

"Good. We're officially finished here."

As the woman grabbed hold of his wrist and dragged him back towards the entrance to the market place, the soft crooning of the occamy filled his ears and soothed some of the aching loneliness that had filled him since he'd woken up several days earlier. Unconsciously, Harry began humming softly in response; his boyish tones easily harmonizing with those of the occamy as her crooning swelled in volume in response to his hums; their impromptu duet drawing attention from nearby witches and wizards that either stared at him in disbelief or ran in fear once they realized he was carrying an unfettered occamy on his shoulder.

Ten minutes later, the two of them were once more standing just outside of the gates of Hogwarts and Harry was once again trying not to vomit from the unpleasant mode of transportation the woman used. Being stretched out like a rubber band and pulled through a straw the size of a shish kabob skewer was never fun as far as Harry was concerned. The occamy hadn't enjoyed the experience either if her irritated hisses were anything to go by.

They were met on the steps leading up into the castle turned school by Professor McGonagall (one of the NPCs that had supposedly taught his parents) and Headmaster Dumbledore. Both NPCs had paled slightly the moment they got a good look at the creature seated on Harry's shoulder but neither of them remarked upon the occamy's presence to Harry's surprise; he would have expected at one of them to make a fuss about the non-standard pet based upon the reaction the occamy's presence had solicited from Professor Sinistra.

"Please follow me, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall instructed as she flicked her eyes to the occamy's head where it was once again propped on Harry's head before gesturing for him to follow her into the castle. "I will be taking you to be sorted into a house before you join the rest of the students for lunch. After the meal, your new Head of House will see to it that you are settled in your assigned dorm, provide you with a class schedule, and introduce you to one or more students of his or her choice who will help you catch up on the curriculum that you missed while you were indisposed."

"Thank you for taking me to gather my supplies, Professor Sinistra; it was a most informative expedition," Harry stated as he opened his Menu and ended his party with the dark haired woman before accepting the automated party invitation from Professor McGonagall.

As he stepped into the castle, he heard the woman loudly start complaining to the Headmaster, "Never again, Albus! The entire trip was a nightmare! He spoke of killing goblins, he stubbornly refused to get a trunk, questioned the quality of each and every piece of equipment he purchased, demanded to be allowed to purchase a ridiculous number of non-school related books, and you saw the creature he came out of the store with!"

"It sounds like you had a productive morning, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall dryly quipped with a trace of amusement coloring her voice.

"It was a trying morning but I suppose I can't complain too loudly knowing that the end result was finding my beautiful friend here. I had not expected to find such a lovely companion when I had left this morning; do you know if occamies are related to wyverns or dragons in this world?"

"I am not aware of a connection between those creatures; your best bet would be to ask Professor Kettleburn, who is the professor of the Care of Magical Creatures class or Hagrid, who is the school's gamekeeper."

"Thank you for the suggestions, I will seek out one of them first chance I get. Can you tell me more about the houses you and the others keep mentioning?"

"You're welcome, Mr. Potter, it is always nice to see our students taking an interest in learning; even if the subject in question is rather obscure," Professor McGonagall replied with the slightest upturning of her mouth that Harry thought might be her attempt at a smile. "As for the school houses, there are a total of four houses into which all students are sorted based up their personalities and they are called…"

Harry listened attentively as McGonagall explained how the house system worked and what would be expected of him once he'd been sorted into a house. She then went on to list the school rules that he would be expected to follow (which included a few that only applied to his pet since her species was well known to be highly aggressive) and the typical punishments he could expect to face for breaking the various rules. It was a lot of information to take in and Harry hoped that the book that had been recommended by the store clerk, _Hogwarts; A History_, would have the same information so that he could use it as a reference later on.

By the time she'd finished speaking, the two of them were standing in front of a six foot tall gargoyle that jumped to the side when the older woman provided the proper password. Behind the gargoyle was a spiral staircase that moved much like an escalator the moment the two of them stepped onto the stairs. At the top, there was a door that led into a large office where they found Headmaster Dumbledore sitting behind a large desk piled high with paperwork. Harry briefly wondered how the man had gotten there first before he figured that there were bound to be shortcuts within the castle (unless the man had multiple avatars that were distributed throughout the castle so that he could be everywhere at once).

Letting his eyes sweep through the room, he noticed that there were several tables with spindly legs positioned up against the walls (their surfaces filled with an assortment of strange silver gadgets) and a large bookshelf stuffed full of old tomes behind the desk. To the right of the door he'd entered through was a large free standing cabinet (its doors currently closed) while to the left was a tall perch upon which sat what looked like a red swan. If Harry had not seen the occamy first, he'd have been tempted to call the red bird one of the most beautiful creatures in this new world.

Unfortunately for the bird, Harry's new companion was far more beautiful in his eyes. When the red bird showed an immediate interest in Harry, the occamy lifted her head and gave out a single warning hiss that had the bird immediately losing all interest in the eleven year old. _Ah, beautiful is the jealous type,_ Harry thought to himself as he ran a hand over the occamy's feathered tail-tip that was tapping out an irritated tempo against his neck. _I'll have to remember that, least I upset her needlessly by showing any interest in the other creatures and pets that reside in the castle._

"Have a seat, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall instructed as she pointed to a stool sitting in front of the desk.

Harry sat down and frowned when the woman picked up a tattered old hat and placed it over his head; dislodging the occamy in the process (the sinuous creature letting out another irritated hiss as she moved down onto his lap). He growled softly when the hat sank down to his shoulders and he would have ripped it off of his head if not for the small voice that began speaking to him. Confused, he tilted his head to one side and carefully listened to the unseen speaker.

"_Well now, isn't this a surprise; I rarely ever sort students once the term has started. And oh what a child you are. You will shake our world right to its foundations; I have no doubts about that. Hmm, but before you can turn the world on its ears, I must first determine where you belong._"

"What do you mean? Who are you?"

"_I am the sorting hat and it is my job to place you in the house that best suits you. You are ambitious and cunning enough to do well in Slytherin but you'd soon terrify the entire house the first time they attempted to pull you into their inner house politics. You are loyal and hardworking enough for Hufflepuff but your loyalty is too hard to win and you would be easily annoyed by their excessive friendliness and end up alienating them when you continued to rebuff them._"

"_You are intelligent but dislike having your privacy invaded and you'd feel trapped in Ravenclaw as you'd be surrounded by an entire house of avid researchers that would wish to analyze every little thing about you which would have you lashing out more so than you already do. I guess that means there is only one place left for me to put you. Do try not to tear down the entire school when you start shaking the foundations of the world, Mr. Potter._"

Harry was still trying to puzzle out what the hat meant when he heard it call out Gryffindor loud enough for the other two people in the office to hear. The hat was removed from his head a moment later and he found Professor McGonagall giving him a small smile that held a trace of smugness in it that confused him. He only had a brief second to take in the new red and gold trim his clothes were now sporting before the ancient wizard that ran the school spoke up and broke the silence.

"Congratulations, Harry, my boy, I'm certain that you'll make a fine Gryffindor," Dumbledore intoned while his blue eyes twinkled. "Do you have any questions that you'd like to have answered right now? No? Then let us head down to the Great Hall so that you might join your peers for the afternoon meal."

* * *

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

* * *

**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	12. Coping

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twelve: Coping

_Friday, December 24, 2021 10:55 PM_

Harry lay curled up in a red and gold comforter on top of the thick rug covering the floor in front of the fireplace in the common room of the Gryffindor Tower with Hedwig (his occamy, which he'd named after a witch he'd read about in _A History of Magic_) stretched out beside him. He'd been laying there all day and his fellow Gryffindors, those few that had stayed at the castle for the holidays, had given up on getting him to move (or even acknowledge them) sometime around lunch time. The pint sized eleven year old had spent the entire day grieving for his absent friends as his mind teased him with his memories of last year's Christmas Eve that he'd happily spent with Agil, Klein, and the other members of the Fuurinkazan Guild and tormented him with his memories of Aincrad's destruction and what he believed was the death of his self-claimed father and friends.

After a while, in an effort to ease his aching heart, Harry forced himself to think about the time he'd spent in the new game.

He'd been trapped in the world of Magic and Madness (as he taken to calling the new game he'd been trapped in) for five weeks now and nothing had changed. He was still surrounded entirely by NPCs (not a single human player aside from himself to be found anywhere in the castle, even amongst the students) and he still had no clue as to how to break out of the game. His days had been filled with classes and tutoring sessions while his nights were filled with the nightmares and dreams of all that he had lost. Any free time he had was spent in the library researching the game world he was in or holed up behind the curtains of his bed lavishing attention on the ever present Hedwig and reading through the various books he'd purchased.

During the first couple of weeks after he'd been sorted, he'd been hounded by a number of students that claimed to want his friendship but Harry rebuffed all of them; he had no interest in befriending those he believed were nothing more than computer generated characters meant to flesh out the game experience. It didn't help that all of the NPC students that approached him constantly asked him invasive and uncomfortable questions; such as why he was so short, why he'd started school late, and how he'd gotten those scars they could see. The adult NPCs were almost as bad; they constantly asked him how he was fitting in, how he was doing with the make-up work from the weeks of classes he'd missed, and if there was anything he'd like to talk about.

In order to cope with all the unwanted attention, Harry buried all of his insecurities along with his emotions and took to blanking his face into a stony mask whenever he moved through the castle. He also didn't speak to anyone outside of classes or his tutoring sessions and even then he never said a single word more than was necessary. That didn't stop the other characters in the game from seeking him out though and he started treating the more persistent individuals to some of his more humiliating trap pranks.

All he really wanted was to be left alone and be allowed to leave but no one else seemed to understand, except maybe Hedwig but there was little she could do to help him win his way free.

Hedwig had, on the other hand, become rather helpful in discouraging the more annoying NPCs as she often hissed menacingly at them when ever they approached him. She had started out as a computer generated creature but slowly over the course of his first two weeks in the game the green halo circling her green cursor had changed into a gold Health Bar, a green HP Bar, and a blue MP Bar. Harry attributed the change to the same anomalies that had affected the Items he'd come into contact within SAO after he'd reached level thirty. Her status had even been upgraded from pet to familiar on his Stat Page once the change had been finalized.

After the change, Harry found it far easier to interpret her various croons, hisses, squawks, and screeches and read her current moods through her body language. He quickly noticed that she had no trouble understanding him no matter which language he spoke and that she was intimately aware of his health and emotions. Aside from being an emotional barometer and a loyal companion, he also discovered that Hedwig could turn herself invisible using a chameleon effect that helped her to blend in with her surroundings and that she could detect and pinpoint others hiding under invisibility spells (both of which were handy abilities as it meant he never had to leave her behind no matter where he went and that no one could sneak up on him under cover of a spell so long as she was with him – the latter something that Dumbledore seemed particularly fond of trying to do).

If not for Hedwig's presence, Harry suspected he'd have broken under the stress and grief shortly after being fully immersed in the day to day life of being a Student of Magic.

His classes didn't really help as while magic itself was an interesting concept, it just couldn't compare to the world of Aincrad. The only classes he showed the least bit of interest in were Herbology, Potions, and Flying because all three were more hands on. The last class he'd actually mastered upon his first flight on the broom which had earned him a spot as Seeker on his House's Quidditch team and saw several of the NPCs in his age group labeling him a natural flier. Two days later, he'd received a broom via owl delivery and Harry began to suspect that someone was trying to distract him from his desire to leave the game by offering up pleasurable distractions; that thought almost ruined the little bit of enjoyment he'd gotten from the sense of freedom he'd gained while on a broom.

Despite knowing that someone was trying to make him forget that he was trapped in another game, Harry continued to take pleasure in flying; especially when he flew alongside Hedwig and could just fly instead of train. He even enjoyed his first Quidditch game against Slytherin, though he could have done without the opposite team's Beaters trying to kill him with the stupid flying balls; the two of them had kept trying to make the bludgers smack him in the head or take his broom out. Harry had been using his Listening Skills out of habit at the time though and managed to move at the last second each time because of the faint whistling noise the bludgers made as they speed through the air. That was how he found the snitch as well, the soft fluttering of wings just loud enough to catch his attention when it flew within twenty yards of him.

The rest of the classes seemed rather useless in his mind, though he was willing to admit that some of the hexes, jinxes, and charms they learned could be useful when used in combination with his traps. He made certain to put in the effort to learn the Skills they were teaching regardless of his personal opinions though; if only because he feared he'd forever be trapped in this prison game for the rest of his life if he didn't. If the NPC staff noticed his disinterest, they said nothing to him about it; that didn't stop him from noticing the looks of pity and concern that most of them sent his way when they thought he wasn't looking, though.

His research on the game had gone much better, his main source (aside from the school's vast library) was the school's groundskeeper; Rubeus Hagrid. The man was a veritable font on the various monsters and creatures that populated the game and he readily shared that information with Harry in exchange for being allowed to study Hedwig (who didn't mind the extra attention). Hagrid, as the man insisted Harry call him, absolutely adored Hedwig and always had a live treat on hand for the occamy when Harry visited him.

Harry had actually impressed the man with his desire to learn more about wyverns and dragons in his quest to find out whether or not occamies were related to any of the greater and lesser wurms or possibly one of the hot or cold blooded serpents. (Most dragons fell into the hot-blooded serpent category with sea dragons, also called sea serpents, making up the majority of cold-blooded serpents and wyverns making up the majority of the greater and lesser wurms – all of which were also cold-blooded.)

Hagrid was also the only adult NPC in the game that didn't try to force Harry to accept the game as reality which meant Harry willingly continued to seek the man out for the information he provided. Just the fact that Harry was willing to listen to the man (so long as he wasn't trying to fill Harry's head with what Harry believed were false tales of his parents – something the man had only attempted once when Harry first met him) meant that the gentle giant of a man welcomed the stunted eleven year old into his house no matter what kind of mood Harry was in (the default of which tended to fluctuate between irritated, apathetic, and depressed).

At the same time, it gave the other adult characters a false sense of security; they firmly believed that Hagrid would eventually help Harry to realize that he wasn't trapped in some kind of game.

A soft crooning pulled Harry from his introspection and he smiled weakly as Hedwig's scarlet and silver crested head appeared in his line of sight. Allowing his familiar's wordless lullaby to sooth his troubled emotions, Harry snuggled closer to the slightly chilly occamy (the feathered reptilian creature cold-blooded like most serpents – most dragons not withstanding) and let sleep claim him.

* * *

_Friday, December 25, 2021 7:05 AM_

Harry woke slowly and reluctantly the next morning. When he finally opened his eyes, he was greeted with a small pile of gaily wrapped presents stacked neatly in front of his face. His mood immediately plummeted at the reminder that he was trapped in another game, alone, and that all of his friends were either dead or back in the world of the living.

A white hot lance of pure rage rushed through Harry over the thought that the NPCs believed they could buy him with gifts and he had to fight the unreasonable urge to burn the entire lot by throwing them into the fire. There was a small part of him well aware that the game might have supplied him with a new tool crucial to completing his First Year Quest in the guise of a gift. Once the destructive urge passed, Harry sat up slowly and stared at the presents as if they were a nest of Vicious Vipers just waiting for him to turn his back before they attacked.

Hedwig curling up on his lap and wrapping her tail half way around his thigh helped him to calm down even further and he turned his back on the unexpected and unwanted gifts and lavished attention on the occamy instead. He was joined an hour later by the four redheaded Weasleys, two of which Harry knew through the Gryffindor Quidditch Team as they played as the team's two Beaters, and Hedwig shimmered out of sight as she always did when the youngest Weasley appeared; the boy did not like the occamy because she always stared intently at the boy's pet rat (the boy carried the rat with him most everywhere).

"Aren't you going to open your presents, Harry?" Ron, the youngest Weasley and one of Harry's four roommates, practically demanded as he noted the small pile of untouched gifts sitting behind Harry and Harry barely suppressed a grimace over being called by his first name; the eleven year old preferred to be addressed by his middle name after the two years he'd been known as James inside of SAO.

"Come on, James, there should be a little something in there from us," Fred encouraged; Harry knew it was Fred because Fred's voice was slightly deeper than George's which Harry only knew thanks to his Listening Skill.

"We promise it's not a prank…" George added with a grin.

"Well it's not a prank that will hit you at least," Fred interrupted as he smirked back at his twin.

Harry heaved a mental sigh before he reluctantly pulled the pile of presents closer and shifted through them until he found the small box with the tag signed by the twins (if only to avoid said twins pranking him for ignoring them for a second day in a row). He opened it up to find several thin, fleshy colored strips of what looked like leather. Knowing the twins liked playing pranks far more than Harry did and didn't care who got caught in them, Harry carefully lifted out a single strip and clinically studied it before he glanced up at the twins and arched a single eyebrow in question.

"We call it a Lip Trap," George answered as his grin grew wider.

"It was inspired by that prank you used on that seventh year Ravenclaw at the end of last month," Fred continued.

"You remember the one; he followed you around for two hours straight…"

"…trying to get you to answer his questions…"

"…until you got fed up with him…"

"…and gagged him and strung upside down by his feet…

"…with that one rope trick you like to use."

"Anyway, all you have to do…"

"…is flick one of the strips at your target…"

"…and it will latch onto the target's mouth…" Fred gleefully revealed.

"…and seal the target's mouth closed for an hour," George finished with an unholy smirk on his face.

Harry tipped his head to one side and contemplated the fleshy strip in his hand with more interest than he'd shown when he'd first unwrapped the box. He then narrowed his eyes slightly as he flicked the Lip Trap at Fred before either twin realized what he was doing and watched as the strip plastered itself over Fred's mouth and faded out of view, appearing to take Fred's mouth with it.

"Cool," Harry drawled with the tiniest smirk of his own as he carefully replaced the lid on the remaining Lip Traps and sent them to his Inventory while the other three Weasleys laughed… well two of them laughed, Percy (the oldest of the Weasleys still attending Hogwarts and Harry's tutor for Defense Against the Dark Arts, History of Magic, and Magical Theory) just sort of smirked at his younger brother.

"If only you had got them both," Ron lamented once he stopped laughing. "What else did you get?"

Seeing as how it didn't look like the four boys were going to let him neglect his gifts, Harry picked up a random package that had been roughly wrapped in coarse brown paper and opened it to find a hand carved flute that was shaped like Hedwig. Her beak was the mouth piece and her tail fanned out in a circle to form the base of the flute. Bringing the homemade instrument up to his mouth, Harry gave an experimental blow and produced a low pitched note that sounded remarkably like Hedwig when she comforted him with her crooning each time Harry felt depressed. A quick search of the wrapping paper turned up a tag saying the gift was from Hagrid.

Next he opened a box that contained a knitted red and gold sweater and scarf, a large box of homemade fudge, a small loaf of homemade fruitcake, and a handmade card with a Christmas tree on the front decorated with sparkling snitches and brooms. The entire package had been from the Weasley Family (specifically from Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and their youngest child). A confused glance up at the Weasleys, since he'd never met their parents, had George confessing that he and Fred had asked their mother to send Harry a holiday care package when they'd heard that he was staying at Hogwarts all alone for Christmas.

Harry was just reaching for one of the three last remaining presents sitting beside him when a high-pitched squeal drew everyone's attention. To Harry's chagrin and Ron and Percy's horror, an invisible Hedwig had caught hold of Ron's rat (which had originally belonged to Percy) by the base of the tail and was currently holding him about six feet off the floor as she hovered in the air. Harry stood up intending to rescue the rat only to stop and stare in confusion as the rat began swelling until it was so large that Hedwig was forced to release it as the rat turned into a man. Apparently, the four Weasley brothers hadn't expected a man to take the place of the family pet rat either, as they let out startled cries and flung themselves backwards.

The confusion lasted only for about twenty seconds before the rat-turned-man picked up Ron's wand (the redhead had dropped it when he'd flung himself away from the rat-man in shock) and fired several spells at the still invisible Hedwig. Harry sprang into action the moment his familiar was threatened; he pulled his steel cable out of his Inventory and quickly fashioned a net trap that he wrapped around the filthy man and used to pull him off his feet. The man then attacked Harry in retaliation using the stolen wand and struck the eleven year old with a silent, unseen spell that easily sliced through his clothes and cut him open across the chest from his left shoulder to his right hip (turning his green HP Bar red as it dropped dangerously low).

Hedwig prevented the man from attacking a second time by pouncing on his chest, anchoring her tail around his neck through the weave of the net with the tips of her talons piercing the skin of his chest, and poising her beak right over the man's eye as she dropped her invisibility which caused the man to cry out in shock before he immediately began begging and pleading for his life as he dropped the wand and froze out of terror (the rodent instincts of his alternate form taking control of his mind in response to the sudden attack).

"Ronald, run as fast as you can and fetch Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey; tell them it's an emergency," Percy ordered sharply as he dragged Harry back away from the trapped man and tried to stop the bleeding by wadding up Harry's new sweater and pressing it up against the long gash.

"Wands out, ya reckon?" George asked shakily while Fred gave a muffled affirmative (the other teen's mouth still sealed by their prank invention).

Harry wanted to scream, the cut on his chest burned with searing pain. It hurt worse than when the Mossy Wyvern had clawed him on the face or even when he got caught by a Giant Ant one time (it had sliced his right leg open from knee to ankle and flooded the wound with acid like venom). Worse yet, Harry felt like he was suffocating because he couldn't catch his breath due to the pain constricting his chest and the more Percy pushed on the wound to stop the bleeding, the worse the pain got. Gritting his teeth, Harry lifted his right hand to open his Player Menu and quickly navigated to his Inventory.

Scrolling rapidly through the list of supplies and treasures, Harry searched for a healing potion; he knew he should have several of them left since he'd never gotten the chance to use any of them the day Aincrad was destroyed. He'd just found the potions and pulled one from his Inventory when Madam Pomfrey, Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape, Professor Flitwick, and Headmaster Dumbledore burst into the room with their wands drawn. Ignoring the adults, Harry cracked the seal on the pink healing potion and choked it down, praying that it would be enough to at least stop the pain.

The next thing he knew, he was laying on his back on the floor and his shirt had been removed. Professor Snape and Madam Pomfrey both had their wands out and were running them over the bleeding gash that bisected his torso as they chanted the same incantation over and over under their breath. Over top of the muttered incantations the two were saying as they sought to heal his wound, Harry could hear the Headmaster quizzing the oldest Weasley.

"Can you please tell us exactly what happened, Prefect Weasley?" Dumbledore requested and Harry imagined he could hear the man frowning.

"Of course, Headmaster," Percy replied in an overly formal tone. "My brothers and I came down approximately forty-five minutes earlier and found Potter sitting beside the fireplace, where he'd been since sometime yesterday morning, with his occamy coiled up on his lap and his presents untouched. The occamy vanished the moment we turned up and then my brothers persuaded Potter to open his gifts. He was just about half finished when the invisible occamy attacked my old rat; which I'd given to my youngest brother to bring as a pet at the start of term."

Percy's voice trailed off for a moment and when he continued, his voice no longer sounded so stiffly formal, "Potter… James went to free the rat but the rat started swelling up, transforming into the man you see there on the floor. The man that used to be our rat then tried to attack James's familiar with Ronald's wand (which the man had picked up after my brother had dropped in his shock when the man first appeared). James attempted to stop the man by tying him up in one of his strange rope pranks before pulling him off of his feet."

"The man immediately rolled over and attacked James in retaliation; slicing his chest open in the blink of an eye with an unspoken spell that produced no spell light. The occamy then subdued the man and I sent Ronald to fetch Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey. Fred and George covered the man at that point while I pulled James away from his attacker and attempted to stop the bleeding. I saw James pull an unknown potion out of thin air after fiddling with those strange floating pages he can make and drink it just as the five of you showed up," Percy finished softly, his voice having started shaking as he finished his report.

"Thank you. Do you know who this man is?"

"No. I'd never seen him before in my life. I'd had Scabbers the rat since I was about five. He used to sleep in my bed all the time. He's slept in Ronald's bed since August. What kind of man hides himself as a rat and sleeps with children?"

"A desperate man who is supposed to be dead," Snape silkily answered as he finally dropped his wand away from Harry's chest, climbed to his feet, and walked over to join the others.

"Hold still, Mr. Potter!"

"Hedwig never liked Ron's rat," Harry tiredly added as he pushed himself up off the floor despite Madam Pomfrey's protests; his eyes seeking out the red cursor that he could now see hovering above the man's head alongside the green halo that indicated the man was an NPC. "I originally thought it was just because rats are her favorite food, not because the rat was not really a rat."

"Mr. Potter, please stop moving around before you split that gash open a second time," Madam Pomfrey urged as she pushed down on Harry's shoulder in an effort to get him to lie down again while at the same time as she wrapped his entire torso in snug white bandages that poured forth from her wand.

"Filius, if you will kindly contact Madam Bones and Head Auror Scrimgeour and ask them to join us post haste? Tell them there was an attempted assassination by a suspected Death Eater that escaped notice ten years ago if they show any hesitation in complying with the request. Minerva, please see if you can get a hold of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, I believe they are in Romania visiting young Charlie at the dragon reserve, and inform them that their presence is needed. I hate interrupting their trip but it is imperative that they are present in order to defend themselves if needed. Severus, fetch me a bottle of Veritaserum so that we can have it on hand to question Mr. Pettigrew once the others arrive. Poppy, how is Mr. Potter?"

"Stable but there is residual dark magic lingering in the wound and it will likely scar."

"Oh joy, one more scar for my growing collection; what a wonderful Christmas present," Harry drawled sarcastically into the silence that had fallen when the Mediwitch had finished speaking before he reopened his Menu so that he could change into a fresh shirt, feeling more than a little uncomfortable and cold sitting there mostly bare-chested. Above him, his HP Bar slowly began filling back up as the potion he'd taken in combination with whatever Professor Snape and Madam Pomfrey had done began healing the internal damage he'd taken from the spell that had sliced him open.

* * *

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
MP – **M**agic **P**oints (Only in MaM)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter

* * *

Harry's MaM Data/Stats Page (Christmas 1st Year):

**Classification:** Gryffindor Student  
**Level:** First Year  
**Student Rank:** -  
**Health:** Incalculable  
**HP:** Incalculable  
**MP:** Incalculable  
**Familiar:** Hedwig (Occamy – Female)  
**Special Titles:** Boy-Who-Lived, Child-Hero, Natural Flyer, Gryffindor Seeker  
**Wallet:  
**Galleons – 453  
Sickles – 674  
Knuts – 812

**Main Equipment:**

Bag of Holding – Has unlimited space and masks weight of contents  
Broom – Nimbus 2000  
School Uniform – Pants, shirt, vest, tie, robes, shoes, and hat (Basic Clothing with no special capabilities)  
Wand – 11 inches, Holly and Phoenix Feather

**Skills:** (Levels – Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Proficient, &amp; Mastered)

**Magical Knowledge:**

Astronomy – Basic  
Magical History – Intermediate  
Magical Theory – Basic

**Spell Casting:**

Charms – Basic  
Defense – Basic  
Offense – Basic  
Transfiguration – Basic

**Practical Skills:**

Flying – Mastered  
Herbology – Basic  
Potions – Basic

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**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	13. Preparations

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirteen: Preparations

_Monday, December 27, 2021 10:03 PM_

Hidden behind the curtains of his bed, Harry opened his Menu and brought out the three unopened Christmas gifts he had remaining. It had been a trying day (he'd been extensively questioned about the attack on Christmas Morning by three different adults for the fourth or fifth time) and he needed a bit of a distraction least he drown in his grief over the fact that he was still trapped in the world of MaM.

The first one he unwrapped was a box of Chocolate Frogs from Hermione Granger, a rather talkative first year that had been tutoring him in Transfiguration, Charms, and Potions. According to rumors he'd heard, the girl had supposedly been rather obnoxious (in an attention seeking way for the approval from the professors) until she'd nearly been killed by a troll on Halloween night. Harry tolerated her more than most of the other NPC students because she was one of the few that didn't hound him with questions or constantly try to get him to be her friend.

The next gift he opened was a box filled with a handful of inexpensive wizarding games from Neville Longbottom, another first year (who was painfully shy) and one of Harry's roommates in the first year dorm. Neville was also the last of Harry's tutors and the one that had helped him get caught up in Herbology and Astronomy. He was Hermione's best and only friend since he'd been the one to save her when he'd braved a detention (and been threatened with expulsion) to tell a teacher about Hermione being in the bathroom instead of at the feast.

He was also clumsy, forgetful, and very insecure except when it came to defending his only friend or when it came to Herbology and Astronomy (that particular NPC's two best subjects). Harry tolerated him for the same reasons he tolerated Hermione (and the Weasley twins to a point).

After opening both of those presents, Harry felt a small twinge of guilt as he hadn't given out any presents because he honestly hadn't expected to receive any in the first place. Despite knowing that the four students that had given him gifts were NPCs, it still bothered him to accept gifts without giving them something in return. A thank you card would suffice for the elder Weasleys and their daughter since he'd never met them and he'd already thanked Hagrid. His aunt had demanded he have impeccable manners, after all, because it wouldn't do for him to ever embarrass the family (not that they had ever let him go anywhere with them).

After a bit of internal debate on what to get for them (since he wasn't allowed to leave the castle) he chose to make each of them a pendant from the extra dragon scales he had. The moment that had been settled, he turned his attention to the last gift which had been wrapped up in brown paper and a tag that only had his first name written on it (much to his annoyance).

Once opened, he discovered the final gift contained a Cloak of Invisibility and an unsigned letter claiming that the cloak had once belonged to his father. Harry saw it as yet another attempt to supplant reality in his mind but didn't discard the Item because he acknowledged its usefulness – part of him automatically believed the anonymous gift a Key Item that would be needed to complete the current level or possibly the entire game.

He did, however, carefully assess the cloak to make certain that it wasn't trapped in some way and found that it had three spells woven into the fabric that didn't belong; a Tracking Charm, a Monitoring Charm, and a Beacon Charm. The Tracking Charm would allow the movements of the one wearing the cloak to be tracked, the Monitoring Charm would monitor the person wearing the cloak (and therefore allow the caster to hear everything heard or said by the wearer), and the Beacon Charm would allow the caster to easily find the individual wearing the cloak when in the same room.

As a Trap Master, Harry had the ability to disable other people's traps (which had transferred over to this game as an ability that would remove anchored spells from objects and locations) and he used that ability now to strip the unwanted spells from the cloak. He had no desire to paint such a large target on himself when that would allow anyone to find him and monitor his movements so easily (Harry not yet aware that only the person who cast the spells could gain any knowledge from them). He wouldn't have to worry about someone recasting those spells on the cloak because when he wasn't using it, the cloak would be safely stored in his Bag of Holding and accessible only through his Inventory.

Harry immediately tried the cloak on after it had been cleared of the traps and felt an urge to explore the castle in order to search for a proper Monster Dungeon; the lower levels of the castle where he attended his Potions lessons not counting in his mind.

Hedwig joined Harry beneath the cloak the moment he climbed off of his bed (complaining all the while about the way it ruffled her feathers) and he gently ran his fingers along her body to smooth her feathers back into place as he slipped out of the room and down the stairs. When he came to the portrait that covered the entrance to the tower, he hesitated a minute as he suspected that there might be an alarm spell of some kind was tied to the portrait in order to alert the staff whenever a student slipped out of the tower after curfew (and he was on the wrong side to scan the picture for traps).

Not wanting to be caught the moment he left the tower, Harry slipped around the potential alarm by using the Teleport Spell to move him to an out of the way corridor within the castle where he knew there were no portraits, suits of armor, or other castle guard present to see him appear in a flash of blue light. Harry then spent an hour and a half just wandering through the castle looking for a Dungeon entrance without any fear of getting caught due to the combination of his SAO Hiding Skill and the Cloak of Invisibility.

He was just about ready to give up his search for the night when he realized that he'd already been given a clue as to the whereabouts of the castle's Dungeon when he'd been told by Professor McGonagall that the third floor corridor was off limits when she'd explained the rules to him back on the day he purchased his supplies. He mentally kicked himself for not having realized it sooner but he'd been too wrapped up in his grief and anger to really give the matter any serious thought before he'd been given the cloak.

Harry wasted no time in making his way to the third floor and headed straight for the forbidden corridor where he found his way forward blocked by a locked door. Fortunately, one of the benefits of being tutored by Hermione meant that he was familiar with all of the spells that the girl knew and in no time at all he'd used the Unlocking Charm to open the door. He didn't expect to find what he thought was the Boss Chamber on the other side though and he stared in surprise at the huge three-headed dog that was growling at the now open door. He was in no way prepared to face a Boss right off the bat when he'd not tested any of his new Skills against lower leveled monsters within this new game first.

Thankfully, Harry hadn't been stupid enough to fully enter the Dungeon, so he hadn't been trapped inside with the demonic hound. Backing away slowly, Harry pulled the door shut and relocked it to prevent anyone from realizing that the door had been opened. He then teleported himself back to his bed and returned his new cloak to his Inventory before he spent another hour making plans to get in some training above and beyond what he was getting through his so called classes and tutoring sessions (the latter of which were almost over as he had pretty much caught up to the other first years now).

The next morning, Harry made a trip down to Hagrid's cabin to coax the man into giving him a list of creatures that wouldn't be missed within the Forbidden Forest so that Harry could find out which monsters he could safely trap and kill without stirring up too much trouble. He came away with the names of nine monsters; the Acromantula, three species of Troll (Forest, Mountain, and River), Blood Sucking Bugbears, Cornish Pixies, Wild Doxies, Nogtails, and Flesh Eating Slugs. He also learned that there was a hoard of Red Caps (small cannibalistic goblin/dwarf like creatures found in dungeons and on battlefields that will beat their prey to death with crude clubs) that had infested the lower dungeons of the castle that Filch (the school's cantankerous caretaker) was having trouble clearing out.

Harry spent the rest of the week planning his first foray into the Forbidden Forest rather than the lower dungeons (since Hagrid would be helping Filch clear out most, if not all, of the Red Caps that weekend), researching those 'spells' that would be most helpful for dealing with each monster species that he would be hunting, and carving the return gifts for those that had given him Christmas presents. Sneaking enough food to last him for the entire weekend was easy enough after the Weasley twins showed him where the entrance to the kitchens were and introduced him to the House Elves when they caught him pilfering food from the table at meal times.

Figuring out how he was going to disappear for the entire weekend without anyone getting suspicious was a bit harder but in the end he figured he wouldn't be missed since it wasn't all that rare for him to hole himself up in his bed on the weekends when he wasn't in the library studying or researching. Sneaking into the forest on Friday night after curfew proved incredibly easy with the help of the Cloak of Invisibility he'd been given. It didn't take Harry long to find his first monster or rather for the first monsters to find him.

He'd been hunting for the small Pixies or Doxies that Hagrid had told him were in the forest when a trio of large pony-sized spiders had dropped down out of the trees and surrounded him. The Acromantula turned out to be mid-level monsters that were rather difficult to hit with a spell as they were rather fast and liked to attack in small groups. He ended up needing to trap them using a net trap so as not to end up as a spider snack. Once he did trap the menaces (something that had still taken a good forty minutes because of how fast they were), he used the spider exterminating spell he'd found to kill them; earning him Spider Silk, Fangs, Eyes, and Venom in the Item Drop after they shattered.

Over the course of the weekend, Harry would kill twenty more of the Acromantula, a small nest of about sixteen Wild Doxies (which netted him Doxy Venom, Wings, and Eyes), and three Bugbears (nasty looking creatures that resembled stunted bears the size of St. Bernards with grasshopper wings and the mouth of a leech). The meat that was dropped by the Bugbears was gladly devoured by Hedwig while Harry kept the Bugbear Claws, Hide, Blood, and Wings. During the entire weekend, Harry never once noticed that he was being followed by a trio of centaurs that watched his battles with avid curiosity and wariness.

He returned to the castle feeling marginally better but slightly unhappy that the monsters weren't as challenging as he'd hoped they'd be; aside from the spiders. It worried him because weak monsters meant fewer Experience Points and while the spiders were annoying to catch they were far too easy to kill. The remainder of his holiday break was spent finishing the scale pendants that he planned to give to Hermione, Neville, Fred, and George; using the Spider Silk he'd earned over the weekend to create the cords for the simple necklaces. He thought they were rather pathetic gifts as they looked no where near as beautiful as the armor and weapons Lisbeth had made from his scales but it was better than nothing.

He just hoped it would not offend the NPCs as he really didn't want to fight another witch or wizard (the first one had done quite a number on him and he hadn't even gotten any Experience from the fight since he'd technically lost).

The gifts were handed to their intended recipients once the holidays were over and the rest of the students had returned to the castle. All four had seemed both surprised and pleased to receive the gifts and Harry knew he'd taken the right action in the game. Sending off the thank you card to the elder Weasleys proved to be a bit more difficult as the school owls took offense to Hedwig and, in the end, he simply gave up trying to approach the owls. The card would be passed to the twins at the end of the next Quidditch practice with a request to send it to their parents and a clipped explanation as to why he couldn't send it himself.

Harry would venture into the forest every weekend after that, increasing his Skill Levels and his mastery of the fighting spells that he'd learned to date even if his overall Player Level never rose above First Year Gryffindor. He would even occasionally sneak out on a weeknight to beat a few spiders on the nights when he wasn't busy studying with Hermione and Neville for his classes. He did notice that all three of his status bars had grown considerably since he started tackling monsters within the forest (using his MaM Skills as much as possible rather than any of his more lethal SAO Skills). The evidence that he was growing as a player within the new game only fueled his determination to improve his Skills and increase his strength so that he could face the Demon Dog by the end of the year.

He was also extremely thankful that he'd purchased an unlimited Bag of Holding with the amount of Items he'd picked up during his training forays (nearly triple the amount of what was normally dropped in SAO) since he had no way of selling the Items just yet. Towards the end of February his weekend training was put on hold for his second Quidditch match, this time against Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor's second win of the season as Harry once again caught the snitch without too much trouble. It helped that the Hufflepuff Beaters only tried to distract him instead of maim or kill him with the bludgers (not that they were any more successful in their endeavor than the Slytherins had been in theirs).

After that, it was back to business as usual until the second week of March when Dumbledore pulled Harry and all four of the Weasleys out of class and took them to the Ministry for the day so they could testify in front of the Wizengamot at Peter Pettigrew's trial. Dumbledore kept Harry on a tight leash the entire time, never giving him the chance to really speak with any of the numerous individuals to whom he was introduced. Harry was too overwhelmed to care much at the time; the number of NPCs seeking to meet him and shake his hand had greatly disturbed him almost as much as the fact that this game world of MaM seemed to have no other human players in it aside from himself.

When it was Harry's turn to give his testimony, the truthfulness of his account was called into question by a short woman that reminded him of a toad. She started by stating that no mere child could possibly purchase, let alone tame, an occamy. Harry simply scowled at the woman who dared call him a liar as Hedwig revealed herself upon his prompting; her sudden appearance startling more than a few of the witches and wizards within the chamber as no one had been aware that the occamy had been with Harry the entire time, not even Dumbledore.

The toad woman then immediately attempted to get Hedwig confiscated but Dumbledore intervened on Harry's account as the man had given his permission for Harry to keep the occamy and had applied for a proper license on Harry's behalf as his legal guardian. Something that the bearded wizard had done out of a combination of guilt and hope; guilt because he blamed himself for Harry's terrible childhood and hope that the creature would help get Harry to accept reality. There was also the fact that Harry was not the one currently on trial which forced the woman to back down rather quickly, though she had not done so quickly enough to avoid the Ministry taking the heat for her attempt to 'steal' Harry Potter's familiar and protector from him (the press would be quick to turn the entire affair into a proper scandal).

The rest of the trial passed by in a blur as Pettigrew gave his testimony; or rather, he gave his rather shocking confession to the Wizengamot under the influence of Veritaserum (for the second time, though it would be the first time Harry had heard the man's story). It turns out that the man had framed another man to take the blame for a dozen murders that happened ten years earlier and for betraying Harry's parents to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (Harry took that last with a grain of salt; he still didn't believe the story Dumbledore had given him about how his parents had died). Pettigrew had also confessed to faking his own death and hiding himself away as the pet rat of Percy Weasley for ten years so he could keep track of what was happening in the wizarding world.

The rat-man's confession also led to the uncovering of a mass conspiracy to prevent Sirius Black (the man that had been framed by Pettigrew) from receiving a proper trial in which the truth would have been unveiled ten years earlier.

The entire mess would see a slue of changes being made to the current laws and the procedures within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in order to prevent an innocent man from being framed in such a way again. Harry hadn't really paid attention to any of it once he'd given his testimony; aside from making certain that Pettigrew was punished for attacking Hedwig (though the public saw it as the man being punished for his attempted assassination of the Boy-Who-Lived and war crimes against the Potter Family). Upon being returned to the school, Harry disappeared in order to avoid being hounded with questions from the other students regarding the trial.

Two days after Pettigrew's trial, Sirius Black was pulled from Azkaban by order of the Wizengamot, granted a closed tribunal hearing, and promptly found innocent of all charges. Harry wouldn't learn about that until the twenty-second of April, when he was introduced to the man and informed that Mr. Black was his godfather (something else that Harry had trouble believing because it all seemed far too convenient).

In between Pettigrew's trial and the day he would meet his godfather, Harry witnessed his first ever dragon hatching when Hagrid called him down to his hut after supper one evening. It turned out that the man had won a dragon egg in a card game several weeks earlier and because of the interest Harry had shown in dragons and wyverns, Harry and Hedwig had both been invited to the secret hatching. Harry thought it a rather unique experience and wondered what it would be like to face an adult dragon in this world and how such a fight would differ from the seven dragon and wyvern battles he'd faced during his time in SAO.

When the boy and his familiar tried to leave an hour after the hatching, they ran into a slight snag. Norbert, the baby dragon, had imprinted on the first creature it had seen when it broke free of its egg (much like a baby bird) and in this case that had been Hedwig and the little dragon now thought that the occamy was its mother. Hedwig was not impressed. Hagrid was heartbroken; he'd hoped to be the one that the dragon imprinted on. Harry had a headache because he didn't want to raise dragons or any other creature really (Hedwig the only exception); he much preferred slaying dragons and monsters because of the challenge they offered.

On the plus side, because it had been the occamy that the dragon had imprinted upon, the dragon was far calmer than it would have been if it had been Hagrid it had believed was its mother. It was, in a round about way, also an indication that occamies were distantly related to dragons though further research would be needed to prove it. It was a good thing that Hedwig already liked Hagrid enough to willingly stay with the groundskeeper until the dragon accepted the man as a surrogate parent of sorts around two weeks after it hatched.

Harry disliked being separated from his familiar during that time (because she usually helped keep the other students off his back) but he didn't want the dragon to get confiscated because he wanted to study it as it grew; so he could learn more about the dragons of this world (if only to pass the time while he continued his search for a way out of the game).

By the time Harry met Sirius Black (an all around unhappy and unpleasant meeting for everyone involved), Norbert had grown large enough that Hagrid had moved the dragon into the Forbidden Forest (after it had been trained to only eat Bicorns, Bugbears, Gnomes, Acromantulas, and an assortment of non-magical game that lived in the forest). Harry would make it a point to visit the dragon with Hedwig each time he entered the forest to hunt monsters (making certain to feed the growing beast when he visited so that it would continue to recognize him as a friend).

The fact that Harry and Hedwig's presence kept the dragon from going feral and attacking anything and everything (despite its training), meant that the centaurs didn't raise any complaints about the dragon's presence in the forest like they normally would have. It also helped that between Harry, Hedwig, Norbert, and Hagrid's efforts to cut the populations of the more dangerous creatures, the forest was far safer than it had been in years; which meant the other species in the forest flourished after decades of steady decline.

Near midnight on the eighth of May, Harry traveled deeper into the forest than he had previously (the eleven year old hunting a Troll to test his current Skill Level against) and stumbled upon a dying Unicorn. Harry had seen the creatures several times while in the forest but never tried to approach them because he'd always had Hedwig with him and he didn't want to offend his familiar by showing interest in the majestic creatures.

Harry couldn't just leave the unicorn to die though and he'd rushed forward (sending Hedwig flying from her perch on his shoulder) as he pulled one of his last four Healing Crystals and a roll of gauze from his Inventory without any hesitation, hoping it would work on the creature. He quickly dropped to his knees beside the creature, unrolled the gauze to form a large square pad, and pressed the gauze over the gaping wound near the Unicorn's neck in an effort to stop the severe bleeding with one hand as he used his other to activate the Healing Crystal.

He'd stumbled upon the Unicorn far too late for the crystal to do any good though (or the crystal hadn't worked for the creature) and it died just minutes after Harry had found it (the creature already more than half dead when he'd stumbled upon it); the equine holding Harry's gaze as it breathed its last breath. The moment he withdrew his hands from the Unicorn's now dead body, his magic reached out and shattered it as it had with every other death he'd witnessed over the past several months and as he fully expected due to his belief that he was still in a virtual game world.

The last vestiges of the Unicorn's magic left behind a gift for Harry in return for his efforts to save him; Unicorn Mane, Tail Hairs, Hide, the Unicorn's Horn, and the Unicorn's Heart. The hair and hide had gone into his Inventory automatically (as it was supposed to) but both the horn and the heart had been left floating in the air just above the ground where the horned equine had been laying when he'd found it.

The horn was about a foot and a half long and made from what looked like pure silver. The heart, however, had taken the appearance of a delicate flower that appeared to be made from spun glass with tiny motes of sparkling silvery white light trapped inside the center and its petals chased through with thin threads of silver, gold, and ivory.

Harry didn't have any time to mourn the loss of the Unicorn or appreciate the gifts it had left behind for him as he was immediately attacked by an unknown creature wearing a black cloak. It didn't take him long to figure out that the man-like being attacking him had been the one to kill the unicorn; the silver blood coating the front of the was cloak kind of a dead give away. Harry scrambled backwards as a sickly green spell shot towards him and he just barely dodged the terror inducing beam of green light using Sprint.

The tree that was hit in his place exploded violently and Harry quickly pulled his dragon-scale shield out of his Inventory and used it to shield himself from the second green light the creature fired at him, deflecting it back at his attacker. Harry hurriedly pulled both his dragon bone dirk and his Dragon Wire out of his Inventory during the brief pause in the battle caused by the creature dodging its own spell.

The eleven year old then prepared to counter attack but as he wove the knots to create a lethal spiked net trap, a large centaur leapt over his head and chased his attacker off. Heart still beating madly over the unexpected attack and abrupt interruption of said attack, Harry fell into a defensive stance as the half human and half horse being swung around to face him once his attacker had vanished into the forest.

"I am not here to harm you, Harry Potter," the palomino centaur with white-blonde hair and ageless blue eyes assured Harry as he brought his hands forward to show he was unarmed. "My name is Firenze and it is my duty to watch over you while you are in our forest. A duty I have been carrying out since the night you first ventured into the forest during the Month of Janus*."

"Why? And how do you know my name?"

"The stars heralded your arrival many moons ago and the heavens spoke of the tides of change you would unleash upon the forest that is our home. Many in the herd believed that you would bring death and destruction to our home and you have; though not in the way we feared you would. That first night you entered our domain we followed you and prepared to strike you down the moment you attempted to attack an innocent."

"Only, you sought out our enemies and the more prolific pests that have long been a blight on our home instead and struck them down. There are those within the herd that believe we now owe you a Debt of Honor for bringing about a period of prosperity and peace to our forest through your efforts to cull those creatures that would prey upon the innocents of all species that dwell beneath the branches of this ancient forest. Because of that, I was selected to be your guardian while you tread beneath the boughs of our home."

"I'm not sure I understand… if you have been following me all this time, why didn't you show yourself to me sooner? Why now? Why did you chase off that monster that had attacked me? And you still didn't say how you knew my name."

"The entire world knows your name, child; even the heavens speak of you often. As for your other questions; you are a powerful young mage, Harry Potter, but you are not yet strong enough to face the cruel creature that has been slaying the unicorns. It is my duty to protect you from that which would harm you while at the same time allowing you the freedom to face those creatures that you seek to challenge. I had not revealed myself to you sooner because the herd did not wish our presence to drive you out of the forest in fear or anger."

"Oh. You're very good at Hiding because I never once Detected your presence. Can you tell me more about that creature you chased off? Are there many of them inside of the forest or is it a Boss Monster of some type?"

It took a long time for he centaur to reply and when he did it wasn't to answer Harry's question, "Do you know what unicorn blood is used for, Harry Potter?"

"Can you please call me James…? I don't care for my first name much and no, I have no idea what Unicorn Blood is used for aside from possibly being an ingredient for some kind of potion."

"Only the foulest and most evil of potions could be made from the blood of a unicorn and no sane mage would seek such a thing for it is a monstrous thing, to slay a unicorn and steal its blood. Only one who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, would commit such a crime," Firenze stated gravely as he shifted about in obvious discomfort over the present topic. "Additionally, drinking the blood of a unicorn will keep one alive, even if he is an inch from death, but at a terrible price. The moment the blood touches the drinker's lips he will be forever cursed with a half-life because he has slain something pure and defenseless to save himself.*"

"How terrible," Harry murmured as he pulled Hedwig close when she dropped down out of the trees to land on his shoulder to comfort him and he shivered at the sudden chill he felt that had nothing to do with the current weather or Hedwig's icy scales. "I don't understand why a person would do such a thing though."

"As a centaur, I can not pretend to understand what drives a human to do the things he does."

"I don't think humans understand other human most times and the computer generated players in this world confuse me even more. Will you be leaving now, Firenze?"

"I shall accompany you to the edge of the forest to ensure that you will reach the safety of the castle."

"Hnn… nope, I'm not ready to go back yet. I came here this weekend to hunt Trolls and I'm not leaving until I find me a couple of Trolls against which I can test my current Skills. If I expect to survive long enough to beat this game, then I have to grow strong enough to face the rest of the monsters that this game will throw my way. I have no objection to you accompanying me while I Search though; it would be nice to learn more about the forest and the creatures that live here."

After studying the stars for several minutes, the centaur agreed to travel with Harry. Firenze even offered to lead Harry to the part of the forest where the weakest of River Trolls made their home (once Harry had collected the gifts that had been left for him by the Unicorn). As they traveled, the centaur taught Harry about the multitude of plants and animals that could be found within the forest; building upon everything that Hagrid had taught the eleven year old over the past six months and on what he'd learned in Herbology. Once they reached the trolls, Firenze stood back and watched as Harry fearlessly engaged an adult pair of the River Trolls in a fight to the death.

Unlike fighting the other dark creatures that filled the forest, fighting the two Trolls required a considerable amount of effort and Harry had to think on his feet to keep up with their counter attacks. While weak (when compared to other species of trolls), River Trolls were far from stupid (unlike their cousins the Mountain Trolls) and they learned how to anticipate Harry's various attacks (which meant that he couldn't use the same attack more than two or three times in a row before they became useless). The intense battle was just what Harry had needed though and it allowed him to assess his new Game Skills far more accurately than facing off against yet another Bugbear or Pixie nest.

When the fight was over, Harry was left with two clubs (one made of stone and the other made from oak) and several yards of Troll Hide. He also had several new bruises that he'd be feeling for a couple of days but he wasn't worried about them because they'd heal eventually. More importantly, Harry learned that his Spell Casting Skill still needed far more work and that he hadn't yet mastered those spells he'd need to face a stronger troll without taking some serious damage (both his HP and MP Bars had dropped down into the red zone, though his overall health remained mostly unchanged).

That also meant that he probably wasn't ready to face the Demon Dog that was waiting for him at the start of the dungeon.

He allowed Firenze to escort him out of the forest at that point, his mind trying to come up with the best way to improve his mastery over the spells he knew since there were only about four or five weeks left before the current school term ended. And he wanted, no needed, to tackle the Dungeon he'd found before the other students went home because he couldn't take the chance of being forced to repeat his first year if he didn't clear the Dungeon before the end of the year.

Harry said goodbye to the centaur a couple hours later with a promise to return the following weekend as usual.

* * *

**Game Terminology:**

Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
Experience Points – the points earned for each quest completed and each monster killed  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
MP – **M**agic **P**oints (Only in MaM)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
Player Stats – A list of a player's in game statistics and skills  
Skill Points – Experience points that are applied towards mastery of an in game skill

**Notes: **

Month of Janus – Firenze is referring to the fact that the month of January is named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and transitions (also of doors and gates). I chose to have the centaurs refer to the months this way because they appear to place a large significance and the stars and such and thought it would make more sense if the ancient gods of Greece and Rome held a greater importance to them because of their roots as a mythological being from Greek mythology and later adopted by Roman mythology.

* Slightly tweaked quote by Firenze from HPSS, chapter 15, pg 258 (US paperback edition). **Original quote:** It is a monstrous thing, to slay a unicorn. Only one who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, would commit such a crime. The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself, and you will have a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips.

* * *

**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	14. Dungeons

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Fourteen: Dungeons

_Thursday, June 2, 2022 6:00 PM_

Harry placed the large basket of food he'd just collected from the House Elves into his Bag of Holding before he disappeared beneath his Cloak of Invisibility. Hedwig hissed in complaint (the occamy still disliked the way the fabric of the cloak slid over her scales and ruffled her feathers) but quickly settled down the moment Harry smoothed down her feathers before he ghosted through the hallways. He'd taken the last of his End-of-Year Exams earlier that afternoon and no one would come looking for him for at least three days since there were no classes in the morning on top of the coming weekend.

He believed that this would be his last chance to face the Dungeon and he'd trained hard over the past four weeks in order to improve his mastery of his Magical Skills (his only break on the twenty-eighth of May for his third Quidditch match against Ravenclaw – which Gryffindor had won).

In no time at all, Harry was standing outside the entrance to the Dungeon and he took a moment to equip his chosen weapons and armor and un-equip his Cloak of Invisibility. He then took out both his diamond wire and the crude silk rope he'd painstakingly created from the Spider Silk he'd collected before he used his wand to unlock the door. Ready to face his first real trial in this new game, Harry stepped through the door and allowed it to swing shut behind him. The huge three-headed dog scrambled up onto its feet and all three heads growled at him while Hedwig let out an angry screech.

Harry had just enough time to read the name of the creature (Fluffy – Cerberus Class Hellhound) before the creature attacked.

The brutal battle lasted three hours and Harry thought he'd cleared the Dungeon until he noticed the trap door sitting in the middle of the floor that had previously been hidden by the huge monster. Harry groaned in dismay as he realized that the Hellhound probably wasn't the Boss Monster he'd believed it to be at first. Knowing he couldn't just give up now that he'd started; Harry closed out the summary window (after he noted he'd collected Hellhound Teeth, Claws, and Hide, and Fluffy's Heart from the Item drop) and entered the trap door to face the next beast.

He was a bit disappointed to find the next challenge was nothing more than a thick bed of Devil's Snare (which was rather simple to defeat using a fire spell and netted him fresh potion ingredients in the form of Roots, Leaves, Vines, and Flowers). The locked room filled with hundreds of vicious flying keys presented more of a challenge but Hedwig was able to help him catch the key to the door while he dealt with the rest of the keys with a combination of fire and petrification spells (each defeat netting him a single knut).

The giant chess set in the room after the keys posed a real threat because Harry had no idea how to play the game. He did, however, learn that he had full command of the black set of pieces and used them to wage an actual war with the white pieces while ignoring the rules of the game; not a single piece on either side would remain standing when it was over (the last two white pieces finishing off the last of the black pieces before Harry blasted the last of them apart).

It was an epic battle that lasted a full two hours and when it was over, Harry was the proud owner of four marble crowns (two black and two white – one each from the four monarchs that had been part of the game), a two handed white marble broadsword (that was taller than he was and far too heavy for him to lift normally), a huge black marble shield emblazoned with a rampant lion in gold (which was even taller and heavier than the sword), and several blocks of both black and white marble in various shapes and sizes.

By comparison, the half-grown Mountain Troll in the next room was practically a pushover (and earned him first ever Troll Heart alongside of another heavy club, four yards of Troll Hide, and several liters of Troll Snot). Harry needed to rest for a bit after tackling the Troll before he moved onto the next room, taking a moment to sit down and eat while he considered the traps and monsters he'd encountered so far.

Out of the five challenges he'd faced, two of them had been fairly easy (the Devil's Snare and the Troll), one had been fairly simple if time consuming (the Flying Keys), and the last two had been difficult but not quite impossible. It bothered him that he had no idea just how many more rooms he had to clear before meeting the Dungeon Boss and the fact that he'd barely survived against the Hellhound and the Marble Statues meant there was a chance that he couldn't beat the Boss at his current level.

At the same time, Harry refused to leave the Dungeon challenge incomplete because he didn't think that he'd get another chance to run through the Dungeon now that he'd conquered a number of the rooms. He knew the staff of the school would try to stop him the moment they figured out that he was playing through the Dungeon because they'd been trying to make him forget that this was a game that he had to beat in order to escape so he could find his friends. Thinking of Agil and the others sent a sharp pain through Harry's heart as it had been close to eight months since he'd last seen any of them and he greatly feared that it was too late to save them now.

Hedwig's soft crooning as she dropped down onto his knee and nuzzled his cheek helped him to push aside the fear and grief that had gripped him and he thanked his familiar with a kiss on the beak as he shifted her back to his shoulder. He then pushed himself off the floor and moved onto the next room where he soon found himself trapped between two walls of fire blocking the entrance and exit. The logic puzzle and potion challenge was actually the hardest challenge up to this point because Harry had never learned how to solve logic puzzles; his mundane education cut short thanks to him getting trapped inside SAO nearly three years earlier and despite Agil's efforts to help him keep up on some subjects.

If he had been forced to solve the puzzle normally, he probably never would have made it through the challenge but whoever created the challenge didn't lock the task to prevent a player from taking all seven potions into their Inventory and figuring out which ones were the two needed to travel through the fire by the automated naming function of the Inventory Menu. Even then, Harry had only discovered that loophole by accident when he'd picked up the potions after he accidentally bumped into the table while he'd been trying to puzzle out the riddle (much like he'd collected his money from his vault).

To determine which bottle would let him go forward and which one would allow him to go backwards, he pulled both potions out of his Inventory and read through their properties. He then left the riddle on the now empty table, drank a quarter of the potion that would let him through the black flames that blocked the way forward and fed another quarter to Hedwig so she wouldn't be hurt by the flames (leaving them enough to get them back out if they couldn't move forward passed the next challenge).

He felt the potion slide down his throat like ice and shivered while Hedwig loudly complained and ruffled her feathery scales in irritation. Laughing softly, Harry closed his eyes and walked over the threshold of flames and breathed out a sigh of relief when the two of them reached the next room unharmed.

Whatever Harry had expected to find in the next room, it hadn't been a large empty room with nothing but a mirror sitting in the middle of it. He confidently strode to the center expecting a monster to appear once he passed a certain point but nothing happened. Confused, Harry slipped his shield onto his back and moved to inspect the mirror for any clues as to what he needed to do next only for the image in the mirror to capture his complete attention.

A soft gasp of surprise escaped his lips and he felt a huge grin pull at his cheeks as he watched himself dodge a noogie from Klein while Agil and Lisbeth laughed at him from one side. In the background, he could see Kirito and Asuna snuggled up together on a blanket spread out on the ground as they watched Hedwig chase pigeons in the sky with Aincrad floating off in the distance. It was a reflection of everything he wanted and to be so close yet so far away from his heart's desire was killing him inside as he pressed his hand flat against the surface of the mirror.

"_Agil! Tousan, I can't believe I finally found you! I'm here! Kirito? Asuna? Klein? Lisbeth? Guys, can you hear me? Let me in guys! I've been looking for you for months!_" Harry cried out in Japanese as he hungrily watched the scene continue to play out. "_Please guys, let me in!_"

When those inside of the mirror showed no signs of having heard him, Harry began pounding on the mirror's surface in the hopes that the sound would draw their attention. A pained whine issued forth from Harry's lips and tears sprang to his eyes as his self-claimed father and friends continued to ignore him; his heart breaking into a million pieces as they seemingly preferred the company of what he now imagined was a fake copy of himself. He had no idea how long he'd been standing there pounding on the glass and bawling his eyes out when a voice cut through the room and caught him off guard.

"Well isn't this a pleasant surprise, I never would have suspected Dumbledore's little pet experiment to be the one to have cleared the traps for me so that I could just breeze right on through and take what rightfully belongs to my master."

Harry jerked around and nearly tripped over his feet as he watched his Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, Professor Quirrell, step out of the dancing shadows created by the flames near the entrance. Confusion filled Harry as he wasn't certain what the man was talking about and all he really wanted to do was find a way to join his family inside the mirror.

"I don't understand… are you here to try and stop me from completing the Dungeon? Do you know where the Boss Monster is waiting? I need to find it quickly… they don't know that the me with them is a fake, so I have to hurry up and clear the Dungeon so that I can warn them; maybe then they will hear me calling them and the mirror will let me through."

"There is no monster, Potter; just you and me and the Stone that is hidden somewhere in this room."

"Stone? What stone?" Harry demanded as he instinctively backed away from the man as he walked closer; not wanting him to get close enough to transport him out of the room before he'd finished the Dungeon.

"The Philosopher's Stone, of course, why do you think I am here? Did you think the traps placed in the other rooms were nothing more than a game for you to play? No, they were meant to protect the Stone from me but they failed thanks to your efforts. With the Stone in his hand, my master will rise again from the ashes even greater than he was before."

Understanding lit in Harry's eyes in that moment; Quirrell was the Dungeon's Boss and if he wanted to reach his friends in the mirror, then he'd have to defeat Quirrell (though he didn't think he'd need to kill the man; only capture him, like the NPCs had captured Pettigrew on Christmas Day). Harry didn't hesitate to send Hedwig up to hide in the rafters where she would be safe before he attacked Quirrell while the man's attention was focused on the mirror that had so entranced Harry earlier. The man had not expected the attack and Harry managed to set the man's robes alight with a fire spell and stick his feet to the floor with a freezing charm before he had collected himself and fought back.

Once Quirrell started actively trying to kill him, Harry quickly lost ground in the fight and was forced to use his shield to fend off the same acid green spells that the creature in the forest had tried to hit him with. As he deflected and dodged spell after spell and tried to use various net and snare traps to trip up his opponent, Quirrell tried to goad him into growing careless. After about twenty minutes, another voice spoke up and Harry soon learned about the face on the back of Quirrell's head. Any reservations Harry might have had about killing an NPC (and therefore turning his cursor orange) vanished in an instant over the discovery that Quirrell was more monster than man.

It was at that point that Harry learned the face on the back of his professor's head belonged to Voldemort; the evil wizard that had supposedly killed his parents (according to the game plot). Following the logic in most role playing games, Harry surmised that in order to win the game; he'd have to kill Voldemort. The eleven year old was trying to come up with a way to do just that when the Voldemort-Quirrell monster hybrid fired yet another green spell at him and this time when the spell bounced off of Harry's shield, it slammed into the mirror that had been sitting in the middle of the room; causing it to explode.

"_**No!**_" Harry screamed in shock as he saw his chance of finding the others vanishing like smoke as shards of glass sliced through the room; cutting both wizards.

Harry let out a second scream of rage and called forth the lightning spell he'd mastered in SAO and blasted Quirrell's body across the room. Twice more, Harry called the lightning down upon the man as his grief and rage spiraled out of control. The only reason why he'd not used the spell earlier was because it always left him severely drained and he'd been trying to avoid using the majority of his SAO Magic Skills in order to increase his MaM Skills. Harry didn't care right that moment though; he was far too angry about losing what he feared was his only chance at finding the others.

Quirrell's body shattered at that point and a scream filled the room as a black cloud of smoke appeared from the vanishing crystal shards. The cloud then roared in anger as the face from the back of Quirrell's head formed in the smoke before it vanished through the ceiling and Harry knew that somehow Voldemort had escaped but he didn't really care at that moment. The stunted eleven year old dropped onto his knees and wept as he frantically tried to collect the shattered pieces of the mirror so he could fix it; for once not bothering to read the battle summary and therefore never noticed that he'd picked up the four Items that had been dropped at the end of the battle (the Philosopher's Stone, Quirrell's Wand, Quirrell's Turban, and a Mirror Shard).

Dumbledore would find him trying to fit the broken shards back together several hours later, bleeding from the numerous cuts he'd gotten when the mirror exploded and from where he'd cut his hands and knees as he crawled over the floor gathering up as many of the glass silvers as he could find. The bearded man tried to explain to Harry that the mirror was just an enchanted mirror that showed him his heart's desire and that it was incapable of granting said desire but Harry didn't want to believe him. The news that the mirror was also irreparable was the last straw and Harry broke down sobbing over the loss of what he thought had been the answer to his prayers.

Harry would spend the next two days in the school's Infirmary recovering from his various injuries and a severe case of magical exhaustion (all three of his Status Bars dangerously low). He had several visitors turn up to see him during that time but he refused to speak to any of them, drowning as he was in his renewed grief. Not even Hedwig could sooth his aching heart this time, though she tried to several times.

Once he was released from the Infirmary, Harry holed himself up in his bed for another three days to wallow in his grief before he grew angry at himself for giving up so easily. He then spent sixteen hours in the Forbidden Forest wiping out close to sixty Acromantula in his rage before he hunted down a pod of Forest Trolls.

On the eleventh of June, the Gryffindor Quidditch team faced the Slytherin team a second time in order to determine the winner of this year's Quidditch trophy as both of their teams had tied for first place according to the points. Gryffindor won the match in less than five minutes as Harry wasted no time in collecting the snitch; the eleven year old in no mood for a long drawn out game. Their house partied late into the night while Harry retreated to his bed once more and spent the night lavishing attention on Hedwig in order to make up for ignoring her in the days immediately following his battle with the Two-Faced Voldemort hybrid Monster Boss thing.

The final grades from their End-of-Year Exams were posted on the boards on the fifteenth and Harry found that he'd tied with Hermione for top scores in History and Astronomy, with Neville for the top score in Herbology, with Draco Malfoy (a Slytherin that occasionally pestered him and all of the other first years not in Slytherin) for the top score in Potions, with Padma Patil (a Ravenclaw) for the second highest score in Transfiguration (Hermione had earned the highest score in that class), and had highest scores in both Defense and Charms.

Overall, Harry was listed as the top student of his year with Hermione coming in a close second (much to the young witch's chagrin and pride – the latter strictly because she'd helped tutor him when he first started classes). The fact that Harry didn't care that he had the highest scores out of their entire year only served to upset those that truly cared about their grades (mostly the Ravenclaws who prided themselves on being the smartest). The only reason Harry had put in the effort to score so well was because he couldn't risk being held back a year if he wanted to beat this game as quickly as possible.

During the Leaving Feast on the evening of the sixteenth, Gryffindor was awarded the House Cup for having earned the highest number of House Points through the course of the year. The only house that wasn't pleased with that revelation was Slytherin due to the fact that it ruined what would have been a seven year winning streak (the House of Snakes had won the House Cup for six years running). That was on top of them losing the Quidditch Cup to Gryffindor that year as well.

The next morning, Harry would watch from the top of the main staircase as the other students were escorted out of the castle and down to the train; the eleven year old the only one who would not be leaving the castle for the summer.

Dumbledore tried to claim it was because his aunt and uncle had been found unfit to raise a magical child but Harry only saw it as another attempt by the game to supplant reality in his mind (he firmly believed they couldn't send him back to his aunt's because his aunt didn't exist in the game). The fact that his godfather arrived an hour after the other students left only solidified that impression in his mind as he was informed that he would have the summer to 'get to know' his godfather.

Harry only stayed in the castle long enough to stock up on food before he vanished into the Forbidden Forest in order to spend the summer improving his Skills so that he'd be better prepared to face the next challenge the game would force upon him during what would be his second year.

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**Translations:** Japanese to English

Otousan/tousan – father

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
Experience Points – the points earned for each quest completed and each monster killed  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
MP – **M**agic **P**oints (Only in MaM)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
RPG – **R**oll **P**laying **G**ame  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline  
Skill Points – Experience points that are applied towards mastery of an in game skill

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Harry's MaM Data/Stats Page (End of 1st Year):

**Classification:** Gryffindor Student  
**Level:** First Year – Complete  
**Student Rank:** 01  
**Health:** Incalculable  
**HP:** Incalculable  
**MP:** Incalculable  
**Familiar:** Hedwig (Occamy – Female)  
**Special Titles:** Boy-Who-Lived, Child-Hero, Natural Flyer, Gryffindor Seeker  
**Wallet:  
**Galleons – 653  
Sickles – 791  
Knuts – 1502

**Main Equipment:**

Bag of Holding – Has unlimited space and masks weight of contents  
Broom – Nimbus 2000  
School Uniform – Pants, shirt, vest, tie, robes, shoes, and hat (Basic Clothing with no special capabilities)  
Wand – 11 inches, Holly and Phoenix Feather  
Cloak of Invisibility – A cloak that renders the wearer invisible

**Skills:** (Levels – Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Proficient, &amp; Mastered)

**Magical Knowledge:**

Astronomy – Intermediate  
Magical Creatures – Intermediate  
Magical History – Advanced  
Magical Plants – Intermediate  
Magical Theory – Intermediate

**Spell Casting:**

Charms – Basic  
Defense – Basic  
Offense – Basic  
Transfiguration – Basic

**Practical Skills:**

Flying – Mastered  
Herbology – Intermediate  
Hunting – Basic (based upon spells used/mastered)  
Potions – Intermediate

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**10-16-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	15. Godfather

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Fifteen: Godfather

_Friday, June 24, 2022 11:36 AM_

Harry watched the Bugbear he'd been fighting shatter in death as he lowered his wand back to his side. He'd been living in the forest for a week now and he'd been slowly improving his accuracy and speed in spell casting as well as learning how to better control the amount of magic he fed into a spell. His only companions during that time, aside from Hedwig, had been Firenze (who spent twelve hours a day at his side) and another centaur named Bane (a dark centaur in color and mood who'd watch him during the remaining twelve hours).

Both centaurs had taken to teaching Harry archery when he showed an interest in learning how to use a bow and arrow after half seeing Bane shoot down an Acromantula that had attempted to attack Harry from behind while he'd been trying to trap another pair of the overgrown spiders. The more he improved using the bow, the better his accuracy became in spell casting as it took far more effort to hit a target with an arrow than it did with the splash of a spell. The physical aspect of drawing the bow to fire the arrow also helped improve the strength of the muscles in his arms which allowed him to hold his wand steadier.

Harry wished he had thought to learn how to use a bow in SAO as he quickly came to consider the bow a perfect match for him. Of course, he was even better with a wand but Harry wasn't going to admit that to anyone, least of all himself, since that would be an admission that he belonged in this world in his mind.

Hedwig launched herself from his shoulder to claim the Bugbear Meat that Harry had just pulled out of his Inventory and tossed into the air for the occamy. Harry watched her deftly pluck the meat out of the air with her claws and land on a nearby tree where she immediately tore into her food before he moved closer to the burrow the Bugbear had charged out of in order to see if there were any more of the monsters lurking in the depths. He bravely (or more like stupidly) stuck his head down in the burrow and nearly lost an eye to a playful sideswipe from one of the three Bugbear cubs occupying the den.

Guilt filled Harry; he'd stolen their only parent from them (male Bugbears never stuck around long enough to help raise their progeny).

Other players might have simply killed the young to prevent them from growing up but Harry couldn't bring himself to kill babies (regardless of whether or not they were monsters). It was one thing to fight an adult monster in a fair (or near fair) battle but killing defenseless babies made him sick to his stomach and if he'd known the adult Bugbear he'd been fighting was only defending her young, then he'd have left her alone. Besides, if he killed every single creature he came across there'd soon be no more creatures for him to face when he ventured into the forest as he'd quickly learned that these monsters didn't regenerate like the monsters from SAO.

Knowing the cubs wouldn't be able to survive on their own, Harry carefully collected them before he backed out of the burrow; he'd take them to Hagrid. The man had a soft spot for all creatures and he'd see that the babies were taken care of until they could fend for themselves. Using his silk rope, Harry made a small net to carry the cubs in so they couldn't bite him and so he wouldn't drop any of them on accident. He then waited for Hedwig to finish her meal before he headed back towards the castle with Hedwig tracking him from the air as she flew through the branches of the trees towering above them (the occamy stretching her wings) and Bane keeping pace from the trees beside the trail Harry was using.

Bane bid him good day at the edge of the trees and Harry let him know he'd be returning to the forest around sunset (Hagrid was always chatty when he visited the large man) so that the centaur didn't stand there waiting around for him all day. Harry then confidently made his way to Hagrid's cabin and knocked on the door as Hedwig resettled on his shoulder and wrapped her tail around his neck nearly two full times around (the occamy now close to three feet long). Hagrid answered the door just a couple of minutes later and greeted Harry nervously.

"Oh… I wasn't expectin' yeh ter visit today, James."

"Hi, Hagrid; if you're busy, I can always come back later," Harry replied as he glanced up at the huge man that was close to three times his height. "I only came to see if you'd be willing to take care of a trio of Bugbears that I accidentally orphaned when their mother attacked me in the forest. If I'd known she'd had cubs, I'd have just knocked her out instead of killing her to feed Hedwig. I can come back later if you don't have time for a visit right now."

"Ish dat Harry out dere, Hagrid!?" a slightly familiar man's voice demanded, the slight slurring of the man's words indicating that he'd been drinking; drunken idiots being something that Harry was intimately familiar with due to the handful of times that Agil had dragged him to a pub for a night of drinking before the man learned he was only a kid.

"Oh, you have company," Harry needlessly pointed out in a flat tone the moment he recognized that the voice belonged to Sirius Black; his supposed in-game godfather. "I'll come back another time."

"Oh, no, yeh don't," Hagrid gruffly rebuked as he grabbed hold of Harry's arm and dragged him into the cabin; the gamekeeper's nervousness disappearing in the blink of an eye. "It ain't gonna hurt yeh ter say hello at least instead of bein' a right grump."

Harry growled beneath his breath which set off Hedwig who hissed in agitation before Harry forced back his irritation and stopped struggling against Hagrid's hold on his arm. He then pressed his lips together as he took in the disheveled mess that was Mr. Black sitting at Hagrid's table with a Hagrid sized tankard of mead clutched between both hands. The man was currently staring at Harry with undisguised hunger, regret, and grief.

"Hello, Mr. Black; you're looking quite lovely in your drunken stupor," Harry curtly greeted after the third time Hagrid pointedly cleared his throat and pushed Harry closer to the man; the eleven year old ignoring Black's spluttered protests that he wasn't drunk. "Hagrid it was nice to see you again and I would love to stay but the centaurs are waiting for me in the forest because I asked them to lead me up into the mountains so that I could hunt down a Mountain Troll or two. I only came back to see if you could take care of the Bugbear Cubs since I don't like killing babies and it would have been far too cruel to leave them to starve to death."

Hagrid grumbled under his breath about cheeky little stubborn brats as he relieved Harry of the three cubs and set them up in a makeshift nest-box near the fireplace and Harry closed his eyes against the surge of pain that hit him over being called a brat; something that Agil had often called him during the two years he'd known the black merchant. Beating back his grief, least he show any signs of weakness in front of the two NPCs, Harry turned to leave only for Hagrid to drop a hand on his shoulder and steer him into a chair at the table.

"Have a seat, James, and tell meh what yeh've been up ter in the forest. I still can't figer why you keep sneakin' in there; don't yeh know that place is filled with dangerous critters?"

"The only truly dangerous creature in that forest is Norbert and he likes me because he still thinks Hedwig is his mother and I bring him food each time I see him," Harry dryly pointed out as he reluctantly accepted the overlarge cup of tea that Hagrid poured out for him.

"Whazza Norbert?" Mr. Black demanded as he frowned at Harry and Hagrid.

"He's the cute little dragon that Hagrid hatched out a few months back," Harry answered when Hagrid became flustered by the question. "He's finally reached the size of a small single story cabin and he's moved further up into the mountains where the game is more plentiful. And he only comes down close to the forest around castle when he's got a hankering for Acromantula."

"A dragon… you hatched a dragon… are you nuts, Hagrid?" Mr. Black blurted out (his drunken slur vanishing in an instant) as he jumped to his feet and nearly fell on his face as he tripped over the legs of the chair. The man then swung around to face Harry as he demanded, "And you willingly go into the forest knowing there is a dragon on the loose in there!?"

"At least the dragon hasn't tried to kill me, can't say the same for those that live up at the castle what with the rat turned man trying to cut me in half and the Two-Faced Voldemort hybrid thingy trying to blow me up with that stupid green spell he likes to fling around."

"Green spell!? _Green _spell!? Was it a bright, acid green spell or a dark, dirty green spell?"

"Acid green and it practically burned the air each time he fired it. Damn near ruined my dragon-scale shield after the third one I blocked. I'm still pissed that that stupid spell ruined my chance of finding my father because it shattered the mirror where he was trapped with the others."

"Your father? James is dead… I buried his body myself alongside your mother's body," Mr. Black rasped as he dropped back into his chair and continued to stare at Harry in complete confusion. "And you're damn lucky you didn't let those green spells hit you. That was the Killing Curse that was being thrown around. There's no mistaking its acid green color and there are very few things that can block that spell."

"I really wish you people would stop insisting that some guy named James Potter was my father. Just because my middle name is James doesn't mean that I was named after some fictional character in your twisted up game. My aunt and uncle always told me my parents died in a car crash and there is nothing you can say to make me believe differently. The only man I will ever call father is Agil the Merchant and I refuse to believe that he'd dead. I have to keep believing that he's out there somewhere waiting for me to find him or there is no point in living."

"This isn't a game, Harry," Mr. Black quietly insisted.

Harry scoffed and pushed up to his feet, this time avoiding Hagrid's hand when the man attempted to push Harry back down in the chair. He then walked out of the house without looking back. He headed towards the forest until he recalled that he'd told Bane that he wouldn't be returning until sunset and changed his course to head towards the castle so he could stock up on food and kill a couple of hours by hunting the lower levels of the castle for the few Red Caps that he knew were still lurking in the deeper dungeons. He spent a good four hours down there before returning to the kitchen to collect his basket of food.

Supplies replenished, Harry snuck back out of the castle and headed for the forest where he met Firenze just inside the tree line (Bane had passed on Harry's earlier message) and unknowingly picked up a shadow in the form of a black dog. True to his earlier claims about his agenda for the day, the pale centaur took him up into the mountains hunting the strongest and least intelligent of the Troll species. These Trolls were solitary creatures that beat the snot out of anything that got in their way; rock, tree, or creature… it didn't matter; the Troll would smash each of them with equal fervor.

It was a journey that would take the rest of the night and a good portion of the next day once they'd picked up the trail of destruction that a Troll had left in its wake. Harry's luck took a sharp downward plunge at that point as the Troll he'd chosen to track led him right to a crotchety old Graphorn that had escaped from a magical creature reserve further north in the Highlands several years earlier and made its home in the mountains around Hogwarts.

The Troll was dead when Harry and Firenze finally caught up to it and the Graphorn in a right foul mood due to the injuries it had earned while killing the Troll. The Graphorn looked like a cross between a bull and a wild boar with four-toed feet, large humped back, a pig-like snout, short tusks, and a pair of six foot long twisted gold horns on either side of its head that grew out to the side for several inches before they curved forward where they ended in deadly needle sharp points.

This particular specimen stood close to fourteen feet at the withers, was twice as wide as Harry was tall, and had horns that extended out three feet from the point at which they curved forward.

There was no time to make a retreat as the beast let out an angry bellow and charged the moment it caught sight of Harry out of the corner of its eye. Firenze quickly backed out of sight of the raging beast because centaurs were exceptionally vulnerable to a Graphorn's sharp horns and tusks. Harry waited until the last second before he Sprinted five yards to the left in order to dodge the attack. The abrupt movement dislodged Hedwig from her usual perch and Harry let out a sharp whistle that sent her up into the trees to hide where she'd be safe from the rampaging Graphorn.

He then did his best to keep the menace focused on him to prevent it from noticing the centaur. Harry only had enough time to take out his shield, dirk, and steel cable from his Inventory and barely equipped his shield before he was forced to block the creature's next attack; his feet slipping several yards backwards as the Graphorn barreled into the shield and kept running. Taking advantage of the creature's proximity, Harry lashed out with his dirk and stabbed it in the eye; partially blinding the creature and pissing it off even more.

The thing reared up and batted at Harry's shield with both forefeet (its toes curled up like a fists); each blow sending a jolt of pain down Harry's left arm with the third blow snapping something in his arm as he was knocked to the ground. The Graphorn dropped down onto its feet once more just seconds later and began head butting Harry's shield next, its large horns digging gouges in the dirt on either side of the pint-sized wizard and each hit shoving him roughly across the ground.

Harry in the mean time frantically worked to tie the necessary knots he needed to make a lasso with the steel cable using only one hand while trying to ignore the rocks and bushes that were gouging his back and the way the pain in his left arm increased with each shove of the creature's head. Once he had his lasso ready, Harry looped it around one horn and pulled it snug before he rolled over and under one of the horns, scrambled onto his feet, dodged towards the Graphorn's blind side, and Sprinted around the creature so that the cable wrapped around its legs.

When the creature spun towards him the moment it caught sight of him once more, it played right into Harry's trap as it helped him pull the cable taut due to the way it was wrapped around the creature. As the Graphorn fought to stay on its feet, Harry moved in close and lashed out with his dirk a second time to blind it in the other eye before he ducked under its neck and then beneath its belly as he pulled hard enough on his cable to drop the monster onto its side before he tied off the trap around the beast's legs.

Harry then wasted no time in scrambling back out of the way of the trashing horns and feet as the Graphorn struggled to free itself while bellowing out in anger and pain. Panting hard, Harry dropped his shield and clutched at his left arm which was on fire and tingling from the multiple blows he'd blocked with his shield while his back throbbed endlessly from the grit filled scrapes and cuts that now littered his bruised back. He just knew his arm had been broken from the force of the blows but tried not to worry about it just yet because he had to finish the creature in order to both put it out of its misery and to prevent it from breaking free.

Making his way around to stand in front of the creature (well out of range of its trashing horns), Harry lifted his wand and timed an overpowered Incendio to hit the Graphorn's open mouth the next time its head swung down and bellowed out in pain (its hide resistant to spells and the creature thrashing too much for Harry to chance getting close enough to stab it again). The creature gasped and moaned as it swallowed Harry's spell before exploding into millions of crystal shards.

The battle summary appeared seconds later and Harry briefly noted that he'd picked up two Gold Horns, two Ivory Tusks, several yards of Graphorn Hide, and the metal Identification Tag that had been fixed to the creature's ear by the wizards that worked the reserve that it had escaped from seven years earlier. Harry wearily closed out the report and gathered up his shield, taking the time to carefully inspect the dragon scale device for signs of damage (finding only a handful of new scratches from where the Graphorn's tucks had scraped against the shield when it head butted him) before he returned it to his Inventory. He then sat down onto the ground to catch his breath.

"You have grown much this past week, young mage," Firenze declared as he trotted out from his hiding place followed by a black dog that whined continuously as it crept up to Harry's side and began nosing him as if inspecting his injuries.

"Not enough; I relied far too much on my other Skills to deal with the Graphorn," Harry countered as he shoved the dog's face away from him after it prodded a particularly deep cut on his back. Hedwig's return prompted the dog to back away even further when she perched on Harry's knee and hissed warningly at the creature. "Where'd the mutt come from?"

"The beast followed us from the forest's edge; he doesn't appear dangerous so I did not bother chasing him off. Why do you hesitate to use these other skills you speak of if you are obviously more comfortable using them?"

"They are skills that don't belong in this world, skills that I learned when I was trapped in SAO for two years. I use some of them here out of habit but if I only relied on the attacks I learned in SAO, then I'd never master the new skills I need to survive this game. Besides, if I fail to master this game's magic, then I might never be free, so I limit how much I use my old skills in order to make certain I will master the new skills."

The centaur stomped his foot and swished his tail to chase off the flies that had been attracted to clearing by the blood of the dead Troll that hadn't yet shattered (Harry had not approached the remains) but said nothing in reply. Both of the centaurs that watched over the young wizard (Bane had joined Firenze in that duty only after Harry started living in the forest at the end of the term) had simply accepted Harry's insistence that this life was a game at face value because to a centaur, all humans were strange creatures; and Harry was no exception. They also had no desire to anger the mage that they feared could destroy them completely if he should turn on them (the herd well aware of Harry's growing Magical Skills in addition to the other skills he'd spoken of since they'd witnessed him using them many times over the year).

"Did you wish to hunt for another Mountain Troll against which to test your skills or will you set up camp and allow me to tend to your injuries first?"

"Camp… definitely camp, I don't think I could face a flock of sleeping Pixies right now."

"Can you walk or did you wish for me to carry you to a more suitable location?"

"So long as we don't go too terribly far, I can walk," Harry replied as he gently shooed Hedwig off of him before gingerly climbing to his feet. He let out a pained hiss when the movement jarred his arm and pulled on the drying blood that covered his injured back.

Firenze slowly led him back down the mountain and away from the Troll's trail of destruction, Harry's progress achingly slow because each step sent pain through both his arm and his back. Firenze had tried to pick Harry up just once to carry him but had been forced to immediately set the wizard back on his feet when it became obvious that he'd only caused the small child more pain. Harry had actually embarrassed the centaur by apologizing for being too slow before the centaur could apologize for making matters worse. The entire time, the black dog whined as it slunk along in their wake.

Setting up camp involved nothing more than digging a small campfire pit in the center of a small clearing, ringing said pit with a few rocks, and filling it with an armful of dead branches before starting a fire with his wand. Firenze had disappeared into the trees while Harry was doing that and soon returned carrying a section of log that he had cut from a fallen tree. The long was quickly set on the ground a few feet away from the fire and lodged in place with a couple of rocks (to prevent it from shifting).

Harry had then removed his shirt through his Player Menu and sat down on the proffered seat while the centaur knelt on the ground behind him and gently began washing the dirt from the wounds on Harry's back. The young wizard grit his teeth and did his best to ignore the pain the process invoked but every so often soft whimpers and whines would escape from between his lips.

Hedwig watched the process from high in the trees in between guarding the undefended camp from would be predators that had been attracted by the scent of blood or the light of the campfire. The dog on the other hand paced back and forth growling and whining beneath its breath in turns as it continuously watched Firenze working. Harry and Firenze both jumped a bit when the creature let out a long frustrated howl before it suddenly rose up on its hind legs and morphed into a familiar man.

"Damn it all; what the hell were you thinking facing off against a fully grown Graphorn all alone!? Why didn't you just run when you saw the brute!? Why the hell didn't you stop him, centaur!?"

"Shut up, Mr. Black," Harry growled in irritation.

"There is no point in running from a rampaging Graphorn, human; they will ruthlessly chase you down and we centaurs are vulnerable to their horns. Our arrows are useless against their hide and their horns make it difficult to aim for their eyes and had I tried I would have risked injuring the young mage. It takes no less than twelve centaurs to bring down a single adult Graphorn and it is not uncommon for two or more of us to be killed or crippled during the course of such a battle as we are forced to fight the beast with our spears at close range."

"You could have been killed," Mr. Black pointed out as he clenched his fists and stared at Harry.

"If you were so worried, why didn't you show yourself during the fight and help?" Harry demanded before he let out a sharp hiss and jerked forward when Firenze's hand brushed up against a particularly deep and painful cut on his lower back.

"I couldn't help," Mr. Black confessed as he shamefully averted his face and clenched his fists. "I don't know how much you know about Azkaban but the place sucks the very life out of those who are imprisoned there. The bulk of the guards are made up of terrible demons called dementors; beings that call forth your darkest memories and fears as they feast upon your negative emotions and inner turmoil."

"Most wizards think they feed on people's happy memories but that's a lie; they feed on misery or else their presence would encase a person in pure bliss. No, they revel in the suffering they cause and they drink up your pain while your happy thoughts and memories are crushed because positive emotions burn them. After a while, the demons begin feasting upon your soul inch by agonizing inch and with it they take your magic because a wizard's magic is tied to his soul. It is enough to drive a person mad and it doesn't take long for a wizard to lose himself to the madness."

"I was there for over ten years and the only reason I didn't end up completely insane was because I could turn into a dog to dampen the effects that the dementors had upon my soul and I willingly let them take the unpleasant memories from my childhood. Still, ten years is a long time and the damage done to my core was severe enough that it limits my ability to use my magic properly. I can still transform into my animagus form and I can use simple spells that any first through third year knows as well as a few of the simpler healing spells but that's about all I can do for the moment."

"Why were you following us?" Harry asked after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence in an effort to distract himself from the stinging pain lancing across his back as Firenze meticulously spread a centaur made healing cream across his open wounds now that he'd finished cleaning them.

"I was worried you would be hurt running about on your own in the forest. I spent three years exploring the Forbidden Forest with your fath… with my friends and I remember enough about the kind of creatures that make their home here to know that it is a dangerous place. I want to protect you and to make up for not being there for the past ten years when you needed me. I also want… no, I need to understand you; to know why you believe that you are trapped in some kind of fantasy game. I'd also love to hear the tale of how you learned to fight the way you did; I've never seen anyone twist their magic like you do. I'm also willing to do most anything to prove to you that I am not lying about who I am and what I am to you."

Harry just sighed, feeling slightly guilty for causing the man pain even though he knew the man was just another NPC within the game. To Harry the man might just be another piece of computer coding but the man himself would never accept that because he was programmed to believe he existed. Harry couldn't fault the computer generated characters for their beliefs but he did resent the fact that they constantly attempted to suck him into their delusions.

"Please, Harry; all I'm asking for is a chance."

"If that is what you truly wish, then stop calling me that; no one ever called me by my first name before I ended up here and I don't feel comfortable be addressed by that name."

"What am I supposed to call you then?"

"James. I go by James and have for over three years now."

"James? I suppose that should be fairly easy for me to remember, though you don't look as much like the man I knew as your father as I thought you might. You're missing the glasses, have green eyes like your mother, and the patches of white hair throw off the look completely. As do the scars. If you don't mind me asking, Har… James, how did you get the scars on your face? Is that something that the muggles did to you?"

"These?" Harry asked as he reached up to trace the two claw marks that ran down the left side of his face. A sad smile graced his face as he recalled the battle against the Mossy Wyvern and Agil's reactions when he'd shared the story with the older man after he'd returned to their shared apartment. After a slight hesitation, he answered the man's question in order to think of something else other than the pain as Firenze moved around to set his broken arm, "I earned these scars about two and a half years ago when I faced my first Forest Boss. It was also the first dragon I faced. The Mossy Wyvern was a magnificent monster; he was so huge and wicked fast on his feet…"

As he regaled Mr. Black with the tale of his first dragon fight, Harry lost track of his surroundings as he was transported back into his memories. The excitement he'd felt when he'd relayed the same story to Agil filled him once more and for the first time since he'd woken up trapped inside of MaM, he felt truly alive as he relived one of the major turning points in his life (which also happened to be one of the few positive ones in his mind). He was so wrapped up in the retelling of his adventure that he never noticed that both Mr. Black and Firenze were practically hanging on his every word as the centaur set, treated, and secured his broken arm.

Mr. Black would spend the rest of the summer trudging along at Harry's side (spending a good portion of the time in his dog form) and after a few weeks, he began helping the younger wizard train to improve his mastery over various spells he'd learned so far.

* * *

**Game Terminology:**

Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
Experience Points – the points earned for each quest completed and each monster killed  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
MP – **M**agic **P**oints (Only in MaM)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
Player Stats – A list of a player's in game statistics and skills  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline  
Skill Points – Experience points that are applied towards mastery of an in game skill

* * *

**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	16. Tribulation

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Sixteen: Tribulation

_Thursday, May 4, 2023 8:56 PM_

Harry pressed his cheek to the cold, wet, stone floor of the Chamber of Secrets and watched as the monstrous Basilisk shattered into millions of pieces upon its death. The marble sword that had killed the serpent (the same one that he'd picked up the previous year from the White King) bounced heavily off of his left foot, snapping several bones, before it crashed to the floor (and just missed slicing off his nose). He drew in a ragged breath as he tried not to scream in pain as he felt the bones in his foot snapping.

Even worse than his injured foot, was the burning pain caused by the Basilisk's venom coursing through his body from when the creature had sliced through the back of his right arm and pierced his right hip with its fang just a few minutes before it had impaled itself through the roof of its mouth with the aforementioned sword. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Harry opened up his Inventory and pulled out one of the Antidote Crystals that Agil had given to him to carry at all times in case of poisoning after he'd been injured while fighting against the Giant Ants a few years back (when he had still been trapped within SAO).

Pressing the green crystal against his injured hip with one hand, Harry activated the crystal and prayed that it would counteract the venom before the burning fluid reached his heart or his brain. He painted softly in relief as the Crystal soon cooled the burning pain of the venom and washed away a little of his pain. The used Antidote Crystal shattered in his hand a moment later but he ignored the destruction of the now useless device and pressed his hand over the puncture wound for a brief moment in hopes of stemming the flow of blood.

Footsteps splashed across the stone floor a heartbeat later and reminded Harry that he was not alone; that he'd not yet even faced this dungeon's Boss Monster which was yet another version of Voldemort (though this one wasn't hitching a ride upon the skull of some random NPC and at least looked like a normal human in his late teens). Jerking his hand off his hip, Harry rolled over onto his back, and brought his shield up just in time to block the sickly yellow spell that Voldemort Jr. (as Harry had dubbed this version of the creature in his mind) had sent at him with the wand the man had stolen from the comatose girl dying at the feet of an ugly statue of a monkey-faced man.

As soon as the spell ricocheted off his shield, Harry counterattacked by throwing one of his dragon claw daggers with his blood and venom covered right hand, not at Voldemort Jr. (because he'd quickly learned that attacking the monster-man/boy inflicted injuries upon the little girl he'd kidnapped) but at the diary that he suspected might be the key to defeating the Boss. He was confident that destroying the book would defeat Voldemort Jr. based upon things that the monster-man/boy had spouted during the course of Harry's fight with the basilisk.

There was also the fact that Voldemort Jr. had consistently kept Harry from getting too close to said book during the earlier fight; a book that Harry could feel was shrouded in an aura of dark magic.

Time seemed to slow down as Harry watched his blade fly through the air on a stream of pale green light while the memories of this past year flittered through his mind one right after the other…

* * *

_June 25, 2022 through May 4, 2023_

Harry had spent the remainder of his first summer in MaM running wild through the Forbidden Forest with Hedwig, Firenze, Bane, and Sirius at his side. After watching Sirius struggle to find a place to fit into Harry's life (if one could call being trapped in yet another game against his will 'life') during that first week after the man joined him, Harry relented a bit and stopped actively shunning the man. It helped that the man had stopped trying to force Harry to accept this world as reality and made an honest effort to get to know Harry.

He eventually grew to tolerate him much as he tolerated Hagrid, the two centaurs, Hermione, Neville, and the Weasley twins but still held him at arm's length because it wouldn't do for him to become attached to an NPC. Much as he had held the others at arm's length throughout his first year in the game. Hedwig was the only exception to that rule but then again, she was no longer just an ordinary NPC creature; she'd become a part of him and he knew she'd be the only thing he'd miss once he was free of the game.

Two weeks after Sirius had joined him in the forest, Harry had grown comfortable enough around the man that he'd accepted his help in mastering his Magical Skills; including earning two new Skills in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes (both knowledge based Skills that usually weren't taught until third year). More importantly, the man had taught Harry a trick to Transfiguration that made changing one item into another much easier for Harry; the concept of visualization and using his imagination both had been slightly difficult concepts to grasp for the young wizard due to his upbringing (though the time he'd spent in Aincrad with Agil and the others had paved the way for Sirius's lessons).

On his birthday, Sirius had taught Harry both versions of the Muffliato Charm. The first version of the charm caused those it was cast upon to have trouble hearing which allowed the caster to speak without fear of being overheard. The second, advanced version was meant to be cast on a small area and would affect a larger group of people without the need to hit each person individually. Sirius had also taught Harry the Supersensory Charm; a spell that allows the caster to sense things that are not in the caster's direct line of sight up to one hundred yards away. Two handy spells that his virtual godfather insisted were essential for any aspiring prankster to know in order to avoid detection.

The man also promised to buy Harry a gift at the end of the summer but Harry told him he didn't have to. To that end, Sirius had tagged along when Professor McGonagall had taken Harry back to Diagon Alley near the end of August to purchase his school supplies for the upcoming year. The man had slipped away at one point to purchase Harry a few non-approved items that Sirius insisted Harry needed (such as a book on becoming an animagus, plenty of prank supplies, and an obscenely large supply of wizarding candies and treats).

He'd also bought Harry an owl so that they could keep in touch throughout the school year (Sirius scheduled to leave when the new and returning students arrived at the castle). Harry was skeptical about the need for yet another animal companion but admitted that it would be far easier to own an owl than to try and borrow the school's owls after Hedwig had made enemies of them all.

Finding an owl brave enough to weather Hedwig's intimidating presence that also passed Hedwig's high standards had actually been fairly easy. Sirius merely had Harry walk into Eeylops Owl Emporium (since the mail centre had a larger selection of owls to choose from than the Magical Menagerie) with Hedwig on his shoulder and whatever owls didn't plaster themselves to the back of their cages or to the store's rafters were the ones that passed the first test. The small handful of unruffled owls had then been personally inspected by the occamy as Harry walked through the store

Sirius ended up purchasing a male snowy owl with very few black speckles (after Hedwig had refused to allow Harry to have anything to do with the female snowy that had tried to cozy up to him). Harry promptly named the new owl Gaki when the first thing the owl did was bite Harry on the ear when he took him out of the cage upon returning to the castle.

Harry had then said goodbye to Sirius and spent the rest of the day settling his new pet in; the owl forced to roost in Harry's dorm because the other owls chased him out of the owlry (due to Gaki's association with Hedwig – though how the other owls had learned that so quickly was anyone's guess). The next day saw the students returning and Harry attending his first Sorting Ceremony (his own did not count as it had been done privately) and the Start of Term Feast alongside the rest of the students. After the meal (and after the start of term announcements), Harry reluctantly followed the rest of the Gryffindors up to Gryffindor Tower and his dorm all the while wishing that he could return to the forest.

That first night of the new term he was visited by a deranged House Elf that insisted that he needed to leave the school immediately because it wasn't safe for him. Harry barely had time to learn that the creature's name was Dobby and that 'terrible things' would be happening at the school that year before Hedwig expressed her irritation at having her personal space invaded by strange creatures (the occamy had claimed Harry's bed as hers not long after Harry had moved into the dorm though she graciously allowed Harry to sleep beside her).

Harry would then have five relatively normal days before he earned his first ever detention from the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor; Gilderoy Lockhart. The man had unleashed two dozen Cornish Pixies upon the second year students during their first lesson with him and Harry immediately killed them using the Needle Javelin Barrage spell that fired a spray of a hundred needles at the target. The needles were harmless enough to humans and larger animals but fatal to Pixies and Doxies which were nothing more than overgrown bugs.

Professor Lockhart had immediately given Harry two nights of detention once he got over the shock of the pixies exploding into crystal shards just seconds after releasing them. Harry growled and grumbled over the unfair punishment (the man had told the class to deal with the stupid bugs, after all, and that was exactly what Harry had done) as he calmly closed out the numerous summary windows that had popped up upon their death. He considered complaining to his Head of House but decided that it just wasn't worth the effort.

As a result, he had spent the next two Friday evenings after supper addressing envelopes for Professor Lockhart's fan mail while trying to ignore the arrogant tosser as he lectured Harry on the proper methods of handling fame. The worst part of the tedious punishments was that they had eaten into his weekend forays into the forest where Harry continued to improve upon his Skills; cutting the number of hours he spent beneath the trees during those two weekends.

Things had thankfully been quiet for the rest of September and almost all of October and Harry had taken extra pains to avoid Lockhart at all costs because the man had begun to creep Harry out as he practically stalked the pint sized twelve year old between classes. Hedwig didn't particularly care for the barmy ponce either. The peace would be shattered on Halloween night when a scream echoed through the castle as a third year Ravenclaw stumbled across a petrified cat and a cryptic message written in blood on the wall.

The Chamber of Secrets had been opened.

Harry couldn't help but curse under his breath as he immediately equated Chamber of Secrets with Game Dungeon and quickly began making plans to research and locate the new Dungeon because he again assumed that he was required to clear it before he could pass onto his third year. At the time, he hadn't realized that Hermione had overheard him and began making plans of her own to help Harry in his research since he was one of the few Gryffindors that were nice to her; even if he did tend to ignore her outside of their nightly study sessions. He at least never teased her or Neville and was polite enough to both of his fellow second years when they did interact during the study sessions that he'd continued to attend after his tutoring sessions had ended with the pair and that was apparently enough for Hermione to help him.

Six days later, a fourth year Hufflepuff was attacked and petrified not far from the message that Filch hadn't been able to clean off of the wall. On the fourteenth, Harry learned from Hagrid that something had attacked his chickens and killed his rooster but that attack would never be linked to the Chamber of Secrets or the attacks on the students. The next attack would occur during the first Quidditch game of the year, when the Gryffindor team played against the Slytherin team at the end of November.

This time the one being attacked was Harry; the twelve year old targeted by a cursed bludger that repeatedly sought to kill him over the course of the match. Harry wasn't bothered by the bludger; he could easily avoid it with his Listening Skills. On the other, he had been greatly annoyed that someone had tried to kill him during one of the few pleasurable past times he'd found in this cursed game-world.

An hour into the game, Harry caught the snitch to end the game and would have died seconds later, if not for the golden shield that had sprang up around him at the last second to prevent the bludger from bouncing off the back of his head. The bludger exploded a heartbeat later when Harry struck it with a lightning bolt in retaliation; the seeker irritated beyond belief by that point.

He had also been more than a little depressed to learn that his immortality had apparently carried over to this new game and at the same time relieved as it meant he'd have a better chance of getting out of the game alive so that he could find Agil and the others (unless his relatives had actually left him to die but he didn't like to think about that possibility). That night, Dobby the House Elf made a second visit and Harry managed to learn that it had been the elf that had attacked him with the bludger during the game before Hedwig took a bite out of the creature's ear and chased it off once more.

December turned out to be an interesting month, starting with Neville informing Harry that he'd caught Hermione brewing Polyjuice Potion in the out-of-order girl's bathroom on the second floor. Polyjuice Potion was a class four restricted potion and unauthorized possession of said potion or the brewing of said potion without a license could potentially see one tossed into Azkaban for at least five years as well as being charged a hefty fine (depending on the circumstances with which you were caught with the potion). It was also a rather complicated potion to brew and the slightest mistake could kill the drinker (or the brewer if they made an explosive mistake).

Harry had immediately confronted Hermione about the potion and was startled to learn that she'd been brewing the potion to help him research the Chamber of Secrets. The four foot wizard (and oh how his lack of growth rankled Harry even if he hadn't really expected to grow in the game) had been stunned to learn that she was breaking the law for him (though a small part of him cynically pointed out that she must have been programmed to aide him, since NPCs couldn't really act on their own).

Upon learning that she planned to steal the remaining ingredients needed to finish the potion, Harry told her not to bother because it would be easier for him to raid Snape's supplies during supper than it would be for her to raid them during class. He handed her the purloined ingredients first thing in the morning two days later so that she could add them to the potion before their first class and avoid being caught red-handed with the stolen Items.

He then helped keep watch for prefects and professors while she worked on the potion to make certain no one attempted to use the bathroom she was brewing the potion in. The older second year was a bit flustered over the entire situation because it was the first time Harry had gone out of his way to help her or even associate with her outside of classes or their evening study sessions. That was also the day Harry was introduced to Moaning Myrtle; the rather weepy ghost that haunted the bathroom Hermione was using as a temporary potions lab.

Just over a week after they added the final ingredient and left the potion to stew for twenty-one days, the school was inflicted with the idiocy that was Lockhart on a larger than usual basis (his weekly classes usually more than enough to drive half the students up the wall while all the girls just sighed prettily over the flop). This time it was in the form of a dueling club. Harry would earn another two detentions that night because Hedwig had killed the cobra that Draco Malfoy had summoned in a duel against Ron Weasley.

In another reality (where it had been Harry himself that faced Draco in the duel), Harry would have stopped the snake by speaking to it. And he would have earned the entire school's enmity for possessing the rare ability to speak parseltongue at the same time.

Harry had lost his ability to understand and speak to snakes before he ever learned that he could though; the ability vanishing right about the same time the sliver of Voldemort's soul in his scar died (not that Harry was aware of that little nugget of information).

The next day, two third year girls from Gryffindor were found petrified alongside Moaning Myrtle. Harry found the logic of a ghost being petrified when a ghost was technically already dead more than a bit skewed but there was much of this game world he just couldn't understand. Such as the way a good portion of the adults in this game frowned upon him killing off any creature (even when in self defense) while at the same time they allowed and encouraged the students to purchase and use the remains of dead creatures to brew potions.

The bulk of the students would head home for the holidays on the twenty-third, leaving Harry, Hermione, and Neville with the perfect opportunity to use Hermione's perfectly brewed Polyjuice Potion to do some investigating. Hermione wanted to use it on Christmas day to disguise themselves as students in order to interrogate another student suspected of knowing a good deal about what was going on. Harry nixed that idea stating that their suspect (which happened to be Draco Malfoy) would be less likely to speak to another student because Malfoy wasn't the type to trust. Instead, Harry suggested that they pose as professors in order to intimidate the boy into squealing.

They chose three professors that were important enough not to be disobeyed and that the three of them were familiar enough with to impersonate and picked a day when they knew the professors they would be impersonating would be busy with other duties or out of the castle entirely. So it was on the twenty-seventh, that Harry sent Malfoy a summons signed by Professor Snape (the signature taken from a note that the man had signed and copied to the bogus summons with a spell that Hermione had found in the library) to meet him in an unused classroom near the dungeon. Harry then drank the Polyjuice with one of Snape's hairs, Hermione took hers with a hair of McGonagall (carefully filched while the witch was in her human form), and Neville took what was supposed to be one of Lockhart's hairs.

Apparently, Lockhart's hair was actually a wig made from the fur of a blonde rabbit. Or the man had a fetish for long furred rabbits. Poor Neville ended up covered from head to foot with long golden-brown rabbit fur, long floppy rabbit ears, and a fluffy white cotton tail. Hermione had escorted Neville to the Infirmary as his 'Head of House' and reported that he'd been the victim of a poorly thought out potions prank before she hurried back to the bathroom to wait out the transformation while Harry grilled Malfoy with Snape's silky tone (the girl had not wanted to get caught impersonating McGonagall after she had been seen in the Infirmary).

Harry had learned four important bits of information from the Malfoy scion. First, Snape was Malfoy's godfather and allowed Draco to get away with nearly everything. Second, Malfoy's father had a serious grudge against the Weasley family (and therefore so did Draco) and intended to somehow implicate one of the Weasleys in the attacks at the school in order to discredit the patriarch of the red-headed family. Third, the Chamber of Secrets had been opened once before fifty years earlier and that Lucius Malfoy personally knew the person who had opened the Chamber and knew that they had done so. And fourth, that a student had been killed by the monster during the first opening of the Chamber.

Harry had dismissed Malfoy at that point with orders to stop speaking of what he knew in front of the other students so that word of what he knew wouldn't get back to the authorities and implicate him and his family as being responsible for the attacks (he had a part to play, after all). Harry had then returned to the out of order bathroom using Teleport and bottled up the remainder of the potion (including the unfinished goblets containing McGonagall and Snape's hairs while the one Neville had drank out of was washed down the drain) while he waited the final fifteen minutes before he changed back to himself. He then slipped them into his Inventory in case they were needed later.

Harry and Hermione had then made an appearance at the infirmary to check on Neville to make certain he hadn't been hurt by the 'prank' he'd been caught in.

January passed by with little fuss; the only event of note being Neville's release from the Infirmary on the thirtieth fur, ear, and tail free but with a permanent craving for raw vegetables and edible plants (carrots, lettuce, and dandelion greens in particular) and a mild aversion to meat (including fish and poultry). In February, Valentine's Day saw Lockhart recovering his pride enough to torment the entire school with his insanity again as he drowned the Great Hall in the color pink, annoyed the staff with his talk of love potions and enchantments that mess with people's feelings and emotions, and tormented the students with singing telegrams delivered by irritable dwarves dressed as cupids.

Harry made good use of his last remaining Lip Traps to spare himself the humiliation of being forced to listen to some silly rhyme all four times one of the dwarves turned cupids approached him to give him a singing valentine.

While Harry was avoiding love poems from annoying anonymous fans, Neville found a discarded diary stuffed down a suit of armor. His fellow Gryffindor had been caught up in a compulsion charm to write in the diary shortly after picking it up and was drawn into the memory of a boy named Tom Riddle who'd been at Hogwarts the first time the Chamber of Secrets was opened. In that memory, Neville learned that it had been Hagrid who had opened the Chamber and unleashed Slytherin's monster.

He immediately hid the diary in his trunk before he shared what he'd learned about the Chamber with Harry and Hermione later that evening in their common room. Harry refused to believe that Hagrid was the person behind the attacks or that an Acromantula was the creature responsible for the attacks; the twelve year old was intimately familiar with the habits and capabilities of an Acromantula and petrification was not one of them.

The diary would be stolen from Neville's things before he could show it to Harry and Hermione.

Five days after the horrible Valentine Day debacle, a pair of sixth year Ravenclaws had been found petrified in a compromising position in one of the stalls of the same bathroom where Hermione had brewed the Polyjuice Potion. All after class activities were promptly canceled as a result of that fourth attack; including the remainder of the Interhouse Quidditch Tournament. Staff members also began escorting students between classes at that point; the adults concerned since it seemed that the monster only attacked those students that were found alone or in small groups.

Harry had been annoyed by the fact that his weekend trips into the Forbidden Forest were forcefully curtailed at the same time when staff members began performing multiple bed checks each night in order to prevent anyone from sneaking about after curfew. And while he could have slipped out of the tower easily enough, he had no real way of knowing when Professor McGonagall would next check his bed since he didn't know how to cast a Monitoring Spell.

Halfway through March, the monster struck a fifth time and a second year Slytherin was found petrified beneath the message on the wall outside of the same bathroom where the other victims had been found. The next day, Dumbledore was sacked as Headmaster by order of the Board of Governors and the Minister of Magic arrested Hagrid to make it look like the Ministry was dealing with the situation (the large groundskeeper had been accused of opening the Chamber again due to the fact that he'd been framed and expelled for the attacks fifty years earlier).

Hermione and Neville had witnessed the arrest when they'd gone down to ask Hagrid what he knew about the Chamber of Secrets while Harry had managed to sneak into the forest to let the centaurs know why he'd not visited in over a month. Harry had returned to the castle before he could be missed while Hermione and Neville had ventured into the heart of the Acromantula territory in order to speak with Aragog (the father and king of the giant spider colony and Hagrid's old pet) at Hagrid's request and were nearly eaten by Aragog's children.

The two of them had been saved by a hungry Norbert who'd apparently been craving spider that night and the greatly reduced number of spiders thanks to the culling efforts of Harry, Hagrid's dragon, and the centaur herd. Harry had later admonished the two of them for being so reckless and for not talking to him before they took off into the forest; citing the fact that he was on friendly terms with the centaurs and regularly hunted in the forest.

The attacks stopped at that point; or rather they appeared to stop.

Harry didn't stop looking for clues in regards to the location of the fabled Chamber though and eventually found it in the information that Neville and Hermione had garnered from the spiders; the student who'd died the last time the Chamber had opened had been killed in a bathroom. That of course led to the realization that _all_ of the attacks happened in or near the out-of-order bathroom on the second floor.

He didn't need to connect Moaning Myrtle to the murdered student to figure out that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was behind one of the sinks in that bathroom; he'd used his Tacking Skills and found a single trail of faded footsteps disappearing beneath the sink the moment he searched the bathroom when he snuck away from Lockhart for twelve minutes as the man led their year group through the halls after class on the second of April.

Hermione would spend all of her free time between classes in the library over the next four days putting together a list of potential monsters that could be responsible for the attacks and their weaknesses after she learned that he'd found the entrance. The older girl had made Harry promise not to do anything reckless before she handed him the list on the sixth of April. He would spend the rest of April studying that list and eagerly researching the various spells needed to deal with the dangerous monsters.

When he wasn't researching spells, Harry would find ways to sneak into the out-of-order bathroom where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was located so that he could study the spells that hid and sealed the entrance. Unlike the other spell traps he'd removed in the past, the ones surrounding the entrance into the Chamber of Secrets were very old and very complicated; which was why it took him multiple trips to work through the tangle of wards and spells even with the help of his Trapping Skills. The limited time he had to study the entrance each time he snuck away didn't help matter either.

Once he was confident that he could open the entrance, Harry made plans to enter the Chamber after the End-of-Year Exams like he had with the Dungeon up on the third floor the previous year. A double attack on May fourth pushed his plans up by a month when Ronald Weasley had been petrified and a girl had been kidnapped by the perpetrator. Harry still would have waited except that he'd learned from Fred and George that it had been their little sister, Ginny Weasley (whom Harry had never personally met despite the fact that she'd also been sorted into Gryffindor at the start of the year), that had been taken.

Harry had immediately used his SAO Skills to slip out of the Gryffindor Tower so he could open the entrance to the Chamber and go after the girl. It was obvious to him that saving her was a required quest to move onto the next segment of the game since she was the sister of two NPCs he that interacted with fairly regularly. The twins had somehow managed to follow him and demanded that he take them with him right up until Lockhart had stumbled upon the three of them just outside of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

The incompetent boob had then attempted to Obliviate the three of them so that he could steal the credit for finding the entrance to the fabled Chamber of Secrets once he had learned why they were out of their common room unsupervised. Fred and George had quickly taken the fraud down using an assortment of prank spells and prank items that they'd invented while Harry stripped away the last of the spells blocking the Chamber Entrance.

Leaving the twins to guard their prisoner and inform a more trustworthy professor about the man's attempted attack, Harry dropped down into the tunnel leading into the Dungeon with Hedwig gliding down after him. The twelve year old soon found himself on a huge pile of bones; most of which he recognized as the bones of various rodents, Red Caps, a couple of unidentified creatures, and the exoskeletons of dead Acromantula. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, Harry crossed the bone pile and followed the fading tracks of his adversary; picking up the discarded shed of a Basilisk (according to the Item's description) along the way.

Sadly, a Basilisk was one creature that had not been on Hermione's list of potential monsters; it hadn't seemed to fit the profile of the attacking monster (since Harry had never heard 'voices' moving through the halls prior to each attack and he had never been ousted as a parselmouth – due to him losing that borrowed ability) and because the dead rooster had still not been linked to the attacks.

Hedwig landed on his shoulder when he came up to a second sealed door, the occamy mildly distressed over their current location deep beneath the bowels of the castle. Harry let her stay despite the fact that she had grown enough over the last year and a half that she was fast approaching the point where she would be too heavy for him to carry because unlike his familiar, he had not grown; not even a fraction of an inch (a side effect of his body being trapped in a magical stasis for almost two years but Harry still saw it as proof that he was trapped within a game). It took him nearly an hour to unravel the spells sealing the inner door and Harry figured it either held a Boss Monster or the Basilisk.

He soon discovered it held both.

He'd entered what he soon learned was the fabled Chamber of Secrets (and not the first chamber in a series of Dungeons leading up to the Chamber as he'd originally expected) to find Ginny Weasley laid out at the foot of a statue of an ugly looking man with monkeyish features with an older teen hovering over her. Harry had been more than a little confused about who the teen was and why he was there until the older boy revealed that he'd manipulated Ginny into attacking the students all year long. He'd also revealed himself to be an incarnation of Voldemort.

The next two hours had pitted Harry and Hedwig against the memory of a young Voldemort (whose true name was Tom Marvolo Riddle) who continuously fired an assortment of dark spells at him (including the Killing Curse) and Tentatio the Basilisk. At the same time, the teen had seen fit to boast about how he was a memory preserved in a diary, how he had ended up with Ginny Weasley, how he had been using Ginny all year long, and how he was going to take over the world once he'd killed Harry.

Harry had carefully paid attention to Voldemort Jr.'s monologue while he dodged spells and avoided the basilisk's gaze; the young gamer using his Research Skill to dissect the man's words for any clue on how to defeat him. While he had been doing that, Hedwig ended up being petrified by the sixty meter long serpent after she blinded the deadly monster (its deadly gaze glinting off of her wings scales in the same instant that she had destroyed the second eye) and Harry had barely caught her in time to prevent her frozen body from shattering as it fell out of the air.

If not for his familiar's sacrifice, Harry wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell of defeating the Basilisk on his own in battle. A battle that had been every bit as difficult as the battle he'd fought against the three-headed Hell Hound that he'd faced a less than a year earlier.

Even so, Harry had not escaped the battle without injuries… When the creature had tried to bite him the first time, the Basilisk's fang had been deflected by his shield; leaving a long gouge across the curse-singed silvery-blue scale before it had sliced through the skin and muscles of his upper right arm and shoulder to pierce the back of his right hip as he was forced to his knees. The blinded monster had reared back and flicked its tongue out at him, using the scent of his freshly spilled blood to mark his exact location as it struck a second time.

He scrambled backwards but wasn't able to get very far due to the burning pain of the venom flowing through the wounds that the Basilisk had inflicted upon him. In a desperate attempt to survive the battle once he realized he wouldn't be able to outrun the monster any longer, he'd withdrawn the heavy marble sword he'd picked up the previous year out of his Inventory and fumbled it into an upright position as the Basilisk's open mouth surrounded him. Luck was on his side for once when the sharpened blade of stone rammed home into the brain of the Basilisk; killing it instantly.

Harry had simply laid there panting and in pain as the monster had reared back and thrashed around in death for several long seconds before it shattered. The battle wasn't over just yet though…

Time sped back up as Harry watched his bloodied dagger find its mark in the heart of the black diary. The near solid shade of Voldemort Jr. screamed in outrage and pain as the diary bled out a mixture of black ink and blood while cracks began to appear on the shade. Bright white light shone through each crack until the shade once known as Tom Marvolo Riddle shattered in death at the same time as the diary that had housed the shade (which was a fraction of Riddle's soul – though Harry didn't know that yet) released a cloud of black smoke that screamed before shattering (leaving behind the ruined diary).

Harry pressed his face back down against the cold, wet stone floor of the Chamber of Secrets and closed his eyes now that the battle was over. He drifted in and out of delirium for several hours as the Antidote Crystal that he'd used fought to neutralize the venom eating its way through his bloodstream while the Weasley girl remained unconscious. During one of his brief moments of lucidity, he used one of the red Healing Crystals (that he'd been saving for emergencies since he didn't think he could get any more in this world) on himself in the hopes that it would help repair what the venom had destroyed.

Twelve hours after the battle ended, Harry finally felt well enough to collect the remains of the original diary (which was labeled as Voldemort's Soul Receptacle in his Inventory). He also noted that he'd received Basilisk Skin, Fangs, Venom, an Eye, and Tentatio's Heart that had been dropped when he defeated the monster as well as Riddle's Diary (not the enchanted one that he'd destroyed but the true diary of a young Voldemort; which was really just a copy of the shade's memories) that Voldemort Jr. had left behind upon his death.

Harry had then reluctantly placed Hedwig's petrified body in his Inventory because she was far too heavy for him to carry in his current condition. He also needed his hands free in order to carry the still unconscious Ginny Weasley out of the Chamber. The girl was still suffering from whatever it was that Voldemort Jr. had been done to her all year long alongside of the injuries she'd received early on in the battle when Harry had attempted to attack Voldemort Jr. directly before he realized that his attacks were hurting her and before the Basilisk had been called forth.

Lastly, Harry gathered up his scattered weapons and damaged shield before he wearily threaded his arms beneath the girl's arms, hefted her torso off of the floor, and began dragging her towards the exit as he hobbled along on his broken foot and injured hip; the twelve year old far too drained magically to levitate her at that point. He ran into another bit of trouble the moment he exited the main Chamber when he ran into a horde of Red Caps that had been drawn down into the area by the sounds of battle and the scent of blood that had been spilt during the battle.

Harry barely had time to lower the girl he'd rescued down on the floor before the horde was upon him. He ended up with bruises from head to toe before he'd managed to take his diamond wire from his Inventory and use it to create a lethal net trap that destroyed the horde in one fell swoop; a rather cowardly attack that Harry normally never would have used on such weak monsters. He'd not had the time or the strength to fight the horde fairly though and his life hadn't been the only one on the line at the time. Nor had he had the magic to spare to use any spells to deal with the horde of monsters.

Harry had then shut the inner door leading into the Chamber and rigged it with a few of his more reliable net traps to keep people out (until he could come back and explore the room when he wasn't in so much pain) before he carefully continued to drag the Weasley girl back to the bathroom entrance while pausing every few feet to leave a large number of additional traps in his wake. Thankfully, he made it there without running into any additional monsters. He'd been forced to rest for another hour at that point because his foot, hip, and arm were in agony.

He then used a second Antidote Crystal and drank a Potion because the earlier Antidote and Healing Crystals he'd used hadn't been enough to heal the damage he'd taken. After using the crystal and drinking the potion, he wrestled Ginny up into his back as best he could before he used Sprint to climb back up the pipe he'd slid down to enter the Chamber. He was met at the top of the pipe by a battle ready contingent of school staff and Ministry Aurors; all of whom had their wands out and ready. Harry stared blankly at the group of fifteen wizards and witches that had been prepared to brave the Chamber of Secrets before he snorted.

"You're late, the battle's already over," Harry pointed out as he limped forward a few steps before he slowly sank to the floor and let Ginny slide off his back as what little energy he'd still had fled. "I must say I really hate your End-of-Year Exams, Headmaster. Next year, I'm going to demand that you allow me to spend more time training in the Forbidden Forest if you expect me to face a third incarnation of Voldemort alongside the next Boss Monster; though I'm not certain how you plan to top a one thousand year old Basilisk."

All fifteen adults stared wide eyed at Harry as he passed out at that point; none of them had expected Slytherin's Monster to be one of the magical world's most terrifying creatures. Nor had they expected a mere twelve year old to face such a monster alone and survive.

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**Translations:** Latin to English

Tentatio – judgment (also means trial, attack, or temptation): a rather egotistical name for the basilisk and I think a more likely name for the basilisk than Blinky or something equally inane (if amusing) that I've seen crop up in dozens of FanFics (Salazar was portrayed as being rather egotistical in canon, after all).

**Game Terminology:**

Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
MP – **M**agic **P**oints (Only in MaM)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

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**AN:** _Yes, I know this chapter was kind of a cop-out as I didn't really go into any depth regarding the details of Harry's second year but it is very hard to write an original second year that doesn't involve copious amounts of canon events; something that I didn't want. I originally planned to have at least two more chapters covering his second year but I just didn't have enough stuff to write out several chapters and so put most of the year into one long chapter. The rest of Harry's years at Hogwarts will be covered in much more detail, have no fear. ~ Jenn_

**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	17. Trickery

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Seventeen: Trickery

_Monday, May 8, 2023 9:00 AM_

Harry sat up against the headboard of the hospital bed that he'd been moved to after he'd passed out three days earlier due to a combination of exhaustion, blood loss, and pain. He'd slept through the past two and a half days and had only been awake for a couple of hours now. That had still been more than enough time for him to learn that his injuries had been healed, the venom in his blood had been neutralized (though he didn't know if it had been the SAO Crystals and Potion that had done it or something Madam Pomfrey had done while he was asleep), and the Weasley family had been to visit both him (to thank him) and their children/siblings.

He also knew that the youngest Weasley had not yet woken up but that her injuries (which had been inflicted upon her through the bond that had bound her to the Soul Receptacle) had been treated. Harry was also pretty confident that her current condition was the result of Voldemort Jr. stealing her magic and life force to give himself a new body and not something that he'd done. She might just be an NPC in his mind but that didn't mean that he wanted to be responsible for her death. He also didn't want to think of the repercussions of failing his quest since he didn't know if that would reset the year or not and he certainly did not want to repeat that year.

Harry was just contemplating his chances of sneaking out of the Infirmary unnoticed when the doors of the Infirmary swung open and a group of loud wizards and witches trooped into the room. Leading the pack of adults was a cold man with long blonde hair, cruel eyes, and a familiar House Elf that was trying to finish polishing the man's shoes. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were there as well; the two redheads arguing with the blonde man quite determinedly. It only took Harry a two minutes to learn two things; the blonde man was Lucius Malfoy and the man was there to have little Ginny Weasley arrested and thrown into Azkaban as the one responsible for unleashing Slytherin's monster upon the school.

"Children from all four houses were attacked, regardless of blood heritage, and not even you can deny that it was your daughter that was caught red-handed unleashing the monster from within the Chamber of Secrets," Mr. Malfoy silkily pointed out in a smugly superior tone and Harry could clearly hear the satisfaction in his voice; something that bothered the pint-sized wizard.

Before either of the elder Weasleys could defend their daughter yet again, Harry spoke up, "That is a lie; Ginny Weasley was both the attacker's first and final victim."

"And how would you know, boy?" Mr. Malfoy demanded as he whipped around to glare in Harry's direction.

"You mean aside from the fact that I was the one who dragged her unconscious body out of the Chamber of Secrets? I know because I fought the one the responsible and I was the one that destroyed the ancient Basilisk that he'd been setting upon the students all year long. Miss Weasley was hovering near death when I'd found her; her magic and soul being devoured by Voldemort Junior so that he could leave the diary he'd been trapped inside."

All of the adults (bar Malfoy Sr.) flinched, jumped, gasped, or screamed upon hearing the dreaded Dark Lord's name and Harry rolled his eyes at the rather overdramatic reaction. Mr. Malfoy, on the other hand, had narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips together in anger and Harry filed the man's reaction in the back of his mind even as he lifted his chin a bit and dared the man to call him a liar.

"What proof do you have, young man?" a short pudgy man wearing a green hat and tie, whom Harry recognized as the Minister of Magic (Cornelius Fudge) from Pettigrew's trial, demanded as he frowned at Harry.

"What kind of proof are you looking for, Minister?" Harry asked in return as he lifted his right hand in preparation for opening his Inventory. "I have several Items taken from the dead Basilisk, a diary belonging to one T. M. Riddle aka Voldemort Junior, and the remains of the Soul Receptacle that held the memory of the teenage Voldemort that had been drawing on Miss Weasley's life force all year long. Of course, you could just ask Mr. Malfoy to explain what he knows about the Soul Receptacle since he was the one that orchestrated the entire affair in order to discredit the Weasley family."

"Now see here, boy, you can't just go around accusing well known and well respected members of society of things like that," Minister Fudge protested heatedly while Mr. Malfoy went white in fear before the tips of his ears turned red in anger and Harry knew he'd both hit on the truth and hit a nerve.

"Perhaps this is a conversation that would best take place in private," Dumbledore interjected smoothly as he arrived with another group of individuals in time to hear the last part of Harry's exchange with the Minister.

"No, I don't think so, Albus," the stately old woman with a broad square jaw, short gray hair, and thick eyebrows that had come in with the Headmaster insisted as she reached up and adjusted the monocle that she wore over her right eye as she flicked her gaze between Harry and Mr. Malfoy. Harry recognized the woman from Pettigrew's trial the previous year as well; she was Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (DMLE), and a member of the Wizengamot. "I, for one, am very interested in what this young man has to say. I am also very interested in seeing each of the items he's mentioned."

Harry inclined his head to signal his compliance as he opened his Player's Menu and quickly paged through the multiple selections to access his Inventory. His hand hovered over Hedwig's name for a moment as he worried over how she was doing, petrified as she was, before he scrolled further down the list to where his Bag of Holding sat and opened the sub-Menu to browse through the bag's contents as that was where all of his recent acquisitions were placed (aside from Hedwig due to her status as his familiar). He then withdrew the Soul Receptacle, Riddle's Diary, and one of the two fangs he'd collected. A couple of people screamed when the curved snake fang appeared as it was over five feet long, just over half a foot wide at the thickest point, and needle sharp at the tip; in short the fang was far larger than Harry and gave those present a really good idea of just how large the monster was.

"Merlin, Maeve, and Mungo preserve us and protect us from evil," Madam Bones breathed; the prayer of protection falling from her lips without her notice. A prayer that was echoed by more than one of the other adults that were in the room. "I think I am going to want something more substantial than just your word on how in the nine levels of hell you got your hands on that."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked with a frown.

"I mean that I want to view your memory of what happened while you were in the Chamber of Secrets instead of just hearing you repeat your tale."

"Madam Bones, I must protest on behalf of my ward," Dumbledore quickly countered before Harry could ask how she planned to get said memory from him and if it would hurt.

"Albus, I am not in the mood for any of your political games and headache inducing riddles right now. This child holds the key to us understanding what happened down in the Chamber of Secrets and rather than force him to suffer through an interrogation for hours in an effort to drag each and every detail from his mind when he's only just recently regained consciousness; it would be far less painful to merely copy his memory so that we may witness the events through his eyes first hand."

"What exactly happens to the memory when you take it? Does it hurt to have a memory taken? Will I forget everything that happened in the memory that is taken? Will you have to wade through all of my other memories to find the one you want? Are you going to steal my memories of my life before Hogwarts?" Harry demanded as he clutched at the covers draped over his legs as the fear of losing everything he'd shared with Agil and the others slammed into him and stole his breath away.

"Pulling out a memory is an uncomfortable process but there is no pain involved," Madam Bones was quick to assure him when she noticed his growing panic (though she assumed that it was the idea of pain that frightened him). "The details of a memory that has been removed become fuzzy but you won't forget what happened entirely. I have no intentions of stealing any memories from you nor will I need to rifle through your mind to find the memory I wish to view. All you have to do is think of what happened from the moment you entered the Chamber of Secrets to the moment you left the Chamber while I tap my wand against your left temple and pull the memory from your mind. Once I have finished viewing the original memory, I will make a copy of it and return the original to you."

"Oh… that doesn't sound too terrible."

"Mr. Potter, you are in no way obligated to grant Madam Bones permission to pull any memories from your mind and I must adamantly insist that you decline," Dumbledore firmly stated, though the bearded man made it sound more like an order.

"Why?"

"I only wish to protect you."

"I don't need protection. I have been fighting my own battles for as long as I can remember and all you have done is hold me back with the intention of keeping me weak. I have been here far too long and I will do whatever it takes to end this game so that I can find my father and my friends."

"Mr. Potter, I have told you time and time again that this is not a game," Dumbledore ground out with frustration and exasperation. "It has been nearly two years now and it is time for you to grow up and accept the reality around you before you get yourself killed with your silliness."

"Are you implying that Mr. Potter is suffering from a mental illness, Dumbledore?" Mr. Malfoy inquired with a knowing smirk as his earlier fear and anger morphed into satisfaction and amusement.

"I am no more insane than you are innocent of instigating the attacks this year," Harry quipped as he lifted up the ruined Soul Receptacle and Harry watched with fascination as the man's ears began turning red once more. "How about a little wager, Mr. Malfoy? I will bet my entire Inventory that you know exactly how Ginny Weasley got a hold of this Soul Receptacle and if I am right, you will sell me Dobby the House Elf for one galleon and resign from the Hogwarts' Board of Governors. If I am wrong, I will give you every last magical Item that I am currently holding in my Inventory; which includes a number of raw potion ingredients and rare materials from at least eight different species."

"I accept," Mr. Malfoy automatically replied without giving any thought to what other information Harry might have.

"Madam Bones, will you stand witness to Mr. Malfoy accepting the terms of my bet?" Harry asked as he suppressed a smirk.

"Yes."

"Brilliant," Harry replied as he finally let the cold smirk form. "I will give you permission to draw upon four memories that will prove beyond a doubt that Mr. Malfoy knows how this Item ended up with the youngest Weasley. The first two memories are of Malfoy's House Elf, Dobby, trying to chase me out of Hogwarts while warning me that terrible things will happen at the school."

"The third memory is of a conversation I overheard between Draco Malfoy and his godfather, Severus Snape, about his father's plans to ruin the Weasley Family and the fact that Malfoy Sr. had knowledge of the Chamber of Secrets being opened fifty years ago and who had opened the Chamber at the time; and no, it was not Hagrid. Finally, you may take the memory of what happened in the Chamber which will include everything that Tom Marvolo Riddle told me in regards to who had possession of the Soul Receptacle, which had originally been a diary, how it ended up with Ginny Weasley, and how he'd been stealing her magic and soul all year long."

Lucius Malfoy and Harry both knew in that moment that Harry had won the bet, even if Harry had been bluffing for the most part. Mr. Malfoy wasn't going to take Harry discrediting him so lightly though and before anyone could stop him, the older wizard unsheathed his wand from within his cane and fired the acid green Killing Curse at Harry from less than five feet away. Harry didn't even have time to dodge the spell and if he had been anyone else, he'd have died right then and there. Harry wasn't someone else though and the spell simply washed over him (chilling him to the bone while the tainted dark magic fueling the spell made his stomach twist) before it struck the wall behind him and blasted a crater in the stone behind him; sending stone fragments flying outwards.

The two men that had been standing behind Madam Bones tackled Malfoy Sr. to the ground at the same time as the spell exploded against the wall while everyone else but Madam Bones and Headmaster Dumbledore dove towards the floor out of a sense of self preservation. Dumbledore had his wand out but the man hadn't been fast enough to cast a spell before the Killing Curse had struck and Madam Bones had been focused entirely upon Mr. Malfoy and therefore hadn't seen the spell wash over Harry without harming him.

Harry, after having that spell thrown at him countless times over the last two years (by both versions of Voldemort that he'd encountered), ignored his latest close brush with death once his stomach stopped churning. He then opened his Inventory and withdrew a single gold galleon that he flicked at the subdued Mr. Malfoy as he stated, "I win and as agreed there is the galleon I owe you for the purchase of Dobby the House Elf. I'll trust Madam Bones to see to it that you follow through on your resignation from the Board. It was a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Malfoy; do try to work on your magical strength between now and the next time we meet; I prefer my enemies to offer me a real challenge when I face them in battle."

More than one person was gaping at Harry's blasé attitude regarding his near death. Harry didn't even notice though as his attention was focused solely on the House Elf that was suddenly sprawled over his lap; the troublesome creature bawling his heart out over the fact that Harry had saved him from the Malfoys. Harry had originally intended to free the elf so that it wouldn't have to serve anyone but the creature was far too happy being Harry's new elf to agree to being freed. The four foot wizard only hoped Hedwig wouldn't be too cross with him when she was finally cured of her petrification after he suddenly recalled how his familiar had attacked Dobby both times the elf had appeared before him.

Before Madam Bones left to deal with the Malfoy debacle, she copied ten memories from Harry; his encounter with the thing killing the unicorns in the forest, his clearing of the traps protecting the stone from the dungeon on the third floor corridor, and his encounter with the Two-Faced Voldemort Hybrid from his first year school year. From the current year, he had her pull his two brief meetings with Dobby, his Polyjuiced interrogation of Draco Malfoy, the conversation with Neville and Hermione about the memory Neville had seen about Hagrid being responsible for opening the Chamber, Lockhart's attempted attack, and the memory of facing Voldemort Jr. and the Basilisk.

Dumbledore had been less than pleased that Harry had allowed her to copy those memories (and convinced her to make him an extra copy of each that he immediately stored in his Inventory in case he needed to share them with someone else). Harry didn't really care though; he wasn't exactly pleased with Dumbledore trying to cover everything up or his attempt to make Harry look mentally unstable. He was sorely tempted to make arrangements with the Weasley twins to have the old codger pranked in revenge before the end of the year.

* * *

_May 14, 2023 through June 16, 2023_

Harry was finally released just before lunch on the fourteenth of May and he wasted no time in vanishing into the Forbidden Forest for a much needed vacation. He'd been bored out of his mind for the past five days and even though he'd felt fine, Madam Pomfrey had refused to release him sooner because he'd been bitten by the Basilisk. She had claimed that she was only worried that there would be complications due to the sheer volume of Basilisk Venom that had been running through his veins.

Harry secretly thought the woman had kept him locked up on Dumbledore's orders in order to punish Harry for not taking the man's advice back on the eighth when Mr. Malfoy had stormed into the infirmary.

Then there was the fact that Harry had refused to tell the man how to dismantle the traps that Harry had placed through the tunnel leading to the inner door of the Chamber of Secrets (the bearded wizard had been caught up in a number of the traps each time he attempted to explore the Chamber). Harry had cleared the Dungeon and therefore he'd more than earned the right to have first selection of any treasures that had been hidden within the Chamber. And you could bet your bottom dollar that he'd be exercising that right just as soon as he could sneak back down into the Chamber without anyone knowing what he was doing.

There was no way he was going to risk Dumbledore confiscating a Key Item that he might need to complete the next core quest when the man was so determined to keep Harry from finishing the game.

Harry returned to the castle four days later when he received word that the Restorative Draught for those that had been petrified had finally been finished; Harry had kept Hedwig safe in his Inventory while waiting for the potion to be brewed because he had been worried that someone would attack or steal her while she was vulnerable. The twelve year old hovered over his helpless familiar and intently supervised the process as the draught was administered to the occamy (which involved feeding it to her through an eyedropper that was inserted through the small gap in her beak). Knowing it would take at least twelve hours for the potion to reverse the petrification, Harry had then hauled his familiar up to his bed and sat with her until she'd been restored.

Within two days of the potion being administered, all of the petrified victims had been restored and Ginny Weasley had finally woken from the coma she'd been in since Harry had rescued her. On the twenty-fifth, when the Weasleys came to collect their children in order to help the two youngest to deal with everything that happened, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley formally thanked Harry for risking his life to save Ginny (for a second time) and for preventing her from being unjustly arrested. Hagrid was released from Azkaban and awarded compensation for his wrongful imprisonment the same day thanks to the memories that Harry had provided and Neville's memories about what he'd been shown by the memory of T. M. Riddle and what he'd learned from Aragog.

Four days after Hagrid's release and the Weasleys' early withdrawal, Headmaster Dumbledore announced that the normal end of year exams for the first through fourth year and the sixth years had been canceled due to the disruptions to their classes in the wake of the multiple attacks. Unfortunately for the fifth and seventh years, they were still required to take the standardized tests (O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s respectively) administered by the Wizarding Examination Authority. A number of the more studious students were irked by the cancellation of the tests (mostly the Ravenclaws and a handful of members from the other Houses, including Hermione).

The student standings for the year were determined by their classwork and their mid-term tests that were taken back before the winter holidays. Harry shared the top spot amongst the second years with Hermione this time around while Neville moved up from the thirteenth spot to the number nine spot.

On the last weekend of the term, Harry disappeared down into the Chamber of Secrets and spent two days exploring the extensive dungeon and clearing out a group of Red Caps that had moved in. He found a small handful of handwritten tomes, a large assortment of weapons from multiple centuries and eras, and an extensive collection of preserved animal parts from hundreds of different magical creatures (some of which had been extinct for centuries). He also found a bunch of jewelry, a large number of high quality gemstones, hundreds of fist-sized ingots of precious and semi-precious metals, several dozen bolts of expensive fabrics that had been preserved with magic.

In other words, Harry had found what amounted to a king's ransom ten times over plus a little extra.

Harry felt absolutely no guilt in taking it all (he'd not only defeated the Basilisk, he'd removed the traps protecting the treasure); though he did make a silent promise to provide the 'victims' of the Basilisk between one and five percent of the treasure's worth (depending on the total worth of the entire lot) once he had it all appraised. The pint-sized wizard was never more thankful for his unlimited Bag of Holding than he had been at the end of that weekend. If not for that ingenious little bag he would not have been able to carry everything. Once he was finished searching the hidden Dungeon, he left the entrance un-trapped so that the school's staff could explore the dungeon to their heart's content since he had finished.

At the Leaving Feast on the fifteenth, the House Cup had once again been awarded to Gryffindor (for the second year in a row), though the Quidditch Cup had not been awarded due to the tournament being canceled halfway through the year. The next day, Harry watched the students walk out of the castle with envy. He'd tried to sneak out several times but had been caught by Professor McGonagall twice and Professor Snape three times; apparently, someone had managed to tag him with a tracking charm at some point and he had yet to locate the Item it had been cast upon so that he could remove it. He suspected it had been done by Dumbledore while he'd been unconscious after his battle with Voldemort Jr. and Tentatio the Basilisk.

Two hours after the students had left, Sirius Black returned to the castle and Harry slipped into the kitchen to stock up on supplies before he dragged his virtual godfather off into the forest so he could burn off some of his frustration.

* * *

_Summer of 2023_

Harry's summer started off great as he vanished into the Forbidden Forest once more. At first, he spent less time hunting monsters and more time mastering all of the new spells he'd learned over the course of the year and improving his Archery Skill. Sirius, who'd done a considerable amount of healing since Harry had last seen him, worked with him incessantly to that end; pushing Harry day in and day out (much as Agil and Kirito had once pushed him in their efforts to help him find his balance after he'd glitched out at level thirty). Harry never once complained.

After the first week in the forest, Sirius began teaching Harry how to discover his inner nature in preparation for teaching Harry how to unlock his inner animal. The process involved a lot of meditation, charting out the position of the stars on the day of his birth, and cataloging his personality traits. It also involved learning about animal symbolism and how a person connects to a specific animal based upon how well they can relate to that particular creature (this was important since each animal embodies multiple traits and a single trait can apply to more than one animal).

One must choose their animal carefully because trying to transform into a poorly matched animal could easily kill you (especially when choosing between predator and prey type animals that share the same traits – such as the wolf and the horse that both represent loyalty). Determining the animal that best matched your inner nature was a process that could take years; which was why Sirius had started teaching him now even though he was only twelve going on thirteen instead of waiting until he was older.

It was shaping up to be a rather peaceful and productive summer when Dumbledore and the Ministry had to rain on his parade. On July second, Hagrid was led to their camp by Ronan (a red haired centaur with a chestnut coat from the forest's herd) in order to bring both Harry and Sirius back to the castle. The reason? Augustus Rookwood had escaped from Azkaban after murdering Peter Pettigrew on the twenty-ninth of June and the Ministry had come up with the brilliant plan to post dementors around the school and in Hogsmeade in order to protect the school from the dangerous Death Eater.

That meant that the forest would be more dangerous than usual; especially to Harry and Sirius (Harry because he didn't know how to defend himself from the dementors and Sirius because his defenses had been stripped from him due to long exposure to the demons). The centaurs weren't pleased to learn they'd have to worry about the demons either.

And so Harry was forced back to the school; to the castle that was his prison.

It was safe to say that Harry was not in any way pleased with either Dumbledore (for keeping him locked up at the school) or the Ministry (for making his life inside the game more miserable than it already was). Harry, feeling more than a little rebellious, moved himself and Sirius down into the Chamber of Secrets and locked all of the castle's staff members out. He then took his frustrations out on the booming Red Cap infestation and a previously unknown ghoul population that had grown since Harry had killed off the Basilisk which had lived off of the monsters and an assortment of small rodents for several hundred years.

Shortly after the move, the almost thirteen year old learned that his virtual godfather was obsessed with rats. Well, more like obsessed with killing rats as Sirius hadn't forgiven Pettigrew for his betrayal; the man had relentlessly hunted out each and every nest of the creatures within the bowels of castle and killed them while in his animagus form.

For Harry's thirteenth birthday, Sirius managed to browbeat Dumbledore into letting him take Harry to Diagon Alley on a three day mini-vacation. The only two stipulations that Dumbledore had made before he agreed was that Sirius could not take Harry out into the muggle side of London and that no less than three guards were to accompany them for the duration of their stay so that Harry would be protected in the event that Rookwood found him. Alastor Moody, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Sturgis Podmore were the three chosen guards (Moody and Shacklebolt both had auror training and both Moody and Podmore were old friends of Dumbledore's).

Moody (or Mad-Eye as Sirius called him) creeped Harry out, Podmore annoyed him, and Shacklebolt just filled him with pain because the black man reminded him of Agil due to his friendly personality, ready smile, and the way he carried himself like a warrior.

They arrived at the Leaky Cauldron via apparation (which was just as uncomfortable and disorienting as it was the first time Harry had experienced it) bright and early on July thirtieth and promptly checked into their room before meeting up with Harry's guard. After a brief discussion, it was decided that they would head to Gringotts first so that Harry could have a few things appraised.

Two of their three guards would remain outside to keep an eye on the Alley while the third (Shacklebolt) tagged along with Harry and Sirius. Shacklebolt was then left to cool his heels in the lobby when the goblins led Harry and Sirius off to have his Items appraised. The assessment would take all day and more than twenty goblins to appraise each and every Item that Harry had collected from the Chamber of Secrets.

They also willingly appraised some of the numerous Items that he'd picked up during his first two years from his various monster kills. Harry then sold off those Items he didn't feel he needed and made arrangements with the goblins to gift half a percent of the Chamber's wealth to the 'victims' of the basilisk as well as anonymously donating five percent back to Hogwarts. The amount he was gifting was less than he originally planned but because of just how much the hidden treasure turned out to be worth, half a percent of that wealth was still a small fortune.

His reasons for gifting that money to what he believed were NPCs and a fake school had nothing to do with any altruistic need to compensate the 'victims' for their suffering. All he was doing was covering his own arse to prevent the game from interpreting an attempt to keep the entire fortune as greediness and penalizing him for it at some point down the line. Had those NPCs been Human Players, Harry would have felt differently and shared far more of the wealth with them as was only proper (at least in his mind).

Donating to the school also meant that Dumbledore couldn't turn around and say he was hoarding all of that wealth as yet another excuse to keep him locked up longer. And while the donation had been made anonymously, he could and did keep an official record that stated exactly how much he'd donated to the school and how much had been gifted to the NPC victims.

All in all, it was a rather productive day for Harry and the goblins, though his trio of guards had complained incessantly about him being holed up in the bank from eight in the morning until ten at night.

Sirius on the other hand was proud of his godson; he'd gotten one up on Dumbledore (for absconding with the treasure right under the man's crooked nose) and the goblins (because he'd dangled all of that treasure in front of the greedy little buggers but only let them buy what he was willing to sell) when he'd taken possession of that treasure. The goblins were, on the other hand, uncertain of what to make of the stunted wizard, his strange magic, and the vast fortune he'd somehow been carrying around on his person.

Harry's birthday was then spent lazing away in the Alley at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour eating ice cream and window shopping. A good two hours were spent browsing through the merchandise at Quality Quidditch Supplies. On a whim, Sirius bought twenty practice bludgers, fifty practice snitches, a professional grade Quidditch set, several older (and therefore outdated) model Cleansweeps, and a couple of extra beater bats. When Harry asked him if he was mental (because he thought it a waste to purchase so many of the same reusable Items), Sirius just grinned and told him that he bought them to help Harry improve his Casting Skill.

Their third and final day was spent buying Harry's supplies for the coming year; which included the books and supplies for Harry's electives (Arithmancy and Ancient Runes – Harry had no interest in Divination or Muggle Studies and Hedwig was too prone to jealousy for him to take Care of Magical Creatures). Sirius had gone really quiet when he'd learned that Harry still hadn't grown physically during the past four years (aside from filling out and putting on a couple of pounds) after attempting to take the thirteen year old to buy new school robes.

They returned to the castle in a rather subdued mood that evening after eating supper at one of the more popular cafes in Diagon Alley. Harry disappeared down into the Chamber immediately upon their return while Sirius headed up to the Infirmary to confront Madam Pomfrey about Harry's lack of physical growth. There had been an awkward few days as the two of them danced about the elephant in the room (said elephant being Harry's lack of growth). It was something that bothered Sirius far more than it bothered Harry because Harry was long used to not growing by now; even if he wasn't happy about it. Eventually, Sirius distracted both of them by introducing Harry to the new improved training regime he'd thought up.

Harry would soon learn to love and hate spell casting practice.

The next two weeks of summer were spent dodging twenty bludgers (that he wasn't allowed to destroy) while shooting paint spells at fifty fast moving targets in the form of the training snitches. The practice was done both on foot and on the older brooms that Sirius had bought and it forced Harry to learn how to fire spells while on the move without sacrificing his spell casting speed or accuracy. It was sheer madness… and he both loved and hated it. Sirius would often complicate matters by either taking up a pair of beater bats to launch the bludgers at Harry one after another (instead of just letting them fly about) or by trying to distract Harry with an assortment of prank items or spells.

Those practices were rather intense though and as such, Harry occasionally took a day off to just rest and recoup. It was on one such day, on the seventeenth of August, that he decided he wanted to give Hedwig a chance to stretch her wings under the sunny sky and so he took his Nimbus Two Thousand (the broom he'd been given in first year) and headed out onto the grounds to chase his familiar through the sky. Gaki joined them for a while, the owl had stayed in Harry's dorm with the window open since the owl didn't care for the atmosphere down in the Chamber of Secrets (active bludgers weren't exactly owl friendly, after all).

Everything was great right up until Harry ran into his first dementor.

There had been no warning aside from the sudden chill in the air. One minute he'd been laughingly playing tag with Hedwig and Gaki and the next he was suddenly falling from the sky as he became trapped in his memories; reliving the horror of Aincrad's last moments as he was forced to watch Asuna and Kirito shatter over and over again while Klein and Agil vanished in pillars of white light before the entire world crumbled around him. He was saved by Ronan (who'd been guarding the forest's edge at the time and seen him fall from the sky) but the damage had already been done.

Emotionally and mentally scarred from being forced to relive his worst memory, Harry withdrew completely and holed himself up in the Basilisk's Chamber within Salazar Slytherin's statue down in the Chamber of Secrets for the rest of the summer with Hedwig. He refused to see anyone, refused to speak to anyone, and refused to eat. He was drowning in grief and guilt over the harsh reminder of everything that he'd lost almost two years ago. Sirius stayed in the main chamber with him during that time but Harry never even noticed the wizard since he never left the statue.

Dobby, the House Elf he'd purchased through trickery from Lucius Malfoy (an elf he had pretty much forgotten about after he had ordered the Elf to never call him Harry Potter), finally brought him up to the Infirmary just five days before term started when his health took a turn for the worse due to his self neglect. He would remain in the Infirmary until September first when he was released just in time to attend the Start of Term Feast.

Harry had no desire to attend the feast but the thirteen year old had been ordered to attend the feast by his supposed guardian.

* * *

**Game Terminology:**

MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter

* * *

Harry's MaM Data/Stats Page (End of 2nd Year):

**Classification:** Gryffindor Student  
**Level:** Second Year – Complete  
**Student Rank:** 01 (tied with H. Granger)  
**Health:** Incalculable  
**HP:** Incalculable  
**MP:** Incalculable  
**Familiar:** Hedwig (Occamy – Female)  
**Pet:** Gaki (Snowy Owl – Male)  
**Bonded House Elf:** Dobby  
**Special Titles:** Boy-Who-Lived, Child-Hero, Natural Flyer, Gryffindor Seeker  
**Wallet:  
**Galleons – 1236  
Sickles – 1001  
Knuts – 2148

**Main Equipment:**

Bag of Holding – Has unlimited space and masks weight of contents  
Broom – Nimbus 2000  
School Uniform – Pants, shirt, vest, tie, robes, shoes, and hat (Basic Clothing with no special capabilities)  
Wand – 11 inches, Holly and Phoenix Feather  
Cloak of Invisibility – A cloak that renders the wearer invisible

**Skills:** (Levels – Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Proficient, &amp; Mastered)

**Magical Knowledge:**

Ancient Runes – Basic  
Animagus Theory – Basic  
Arithmancy – Basic  
Astronomy – Intermediate  
Magical Creatures – Advanced  
Magical History – Advanced  
Magical Plants – Advanced  
Magical Theory – Advanced

**Spell Casting:**

Charms – Intermediate  
Defense – Intermediate  
Offense – Intermediate  
Transfiguration – Intermediate

**Practical Skills:**

Archery – Basic  
Flying – Mastered  
Herbology – Intermediate  
Hunting – Intermediate (based upon spells used/mastered)  
Potions – Intermediate

* * *

**AN:** _Just to clarify, Harry was mostly bluffing when he challenged Malfoy with his bet and yes, he was being rather arrogant; not really surprising since he doesn't consider Lucius a real person. If Malfoy had remained cool and calm, he probably would have won the bet through trickery and manipulation. Instead, Harry pushed his buttons more than once and purposefully provoked the man. _

_Oh, and those wondering why he offered up his memory of Draco's interrogation; it was because he could claim that he was hiding under his invisibility cloak if they wonder why he doesn't appear in the memory. I couldn't figure out how to fit that into the chapter though. The reason why the Killing Curse did not kill Harry will be brought up at a later point in the story (don't ask me which chapter because I can't recall off the top of my head). _

_Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter… the next chapter will have the start of the third year and will have more details &amp; character interactions and will be up in roughly four days. ~ Jenn_

**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	18. Turmoil

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Eighteen: Turmoil

_September 2023 through October 2023_

The first month of the term was exceedingly difficult for Harry; his grief still very much in the forefront of his mind. As a result, he had once again completely closed himself off from everyone around him (much like he had after he'd first woken up in MaM). Even Hermione, Neville, Fred, George, and the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team were given a cold shoulder as he skipped out completely on their long standing study sessions and blew off Quidditch practices.

Instead, he spent his free time during the week days scouring the library once more in search of a way out of the wretched game. The fact that he couldn't even sneak off into the Forbidden Forest (because of the dementors) in order to take his mind off his internal turmoil by fighting the various monsters meant that he had no outlet for his negative emotions.

The moment he finished his last class on Fridays, Harry would disappear down into the Chamber of Secrets to continue the spell casting lessons that Sirius had put together for him (minus the bludgers because Sirius had taken those with him when he'd left as a safety precaution). The depressing atmosphere in the damp cavern didn't help him improve his outlook though; since what he really wanted was to be free to move beneath the trees and sleep under the stars like he had before the dementors had been brought to the school.

The information that those that were in third year or higher were allowed to visit Hogsmeade Village on the third Saturday of every month had been welcome news for Harry; the thirteen year old had seen the prospective outings as a welcome distraction from his imprisonment in the castle. Only, he quickly learned that each student had to have a signed permission slip from their guardian in order to leave the castle. Harry had asked if he would be given permission to visit the village with the rest of the students and Dumbledore had told him flat out that he wasn't allowed to leave the castle or the castle grounds.

Harry saw it as further proof that he was a prisoner within the game.

On the twenty-sixth of September, Dobby started a passive aggressive war campaign with Harry in a bid for more work since Harry rarely ever made any messes. It started with unhappy mutterings that Harry mostly ignored because he was too wrapped up in his own problems and quickly escalated to multiple changes of his bedding each night (usually while he was still in bed) and the cleaning of whatever clothes he was wearing at the time. Harry wouldn't have particularly cared but the elf's nightly interruptions were starting to annoy Hedwig and the last thing he wanted was to have a fight break out between the occamy and the elf in the middle of his bed (while he was in it).

"Dobby, I don't know what is bothering you but you need to stop making the bed five and six times a night and washing the clothes that I'm wearing after I go to sleep. You are annoying Hedwig," Harry stated when he finally confronted the elf down in the Chamber of Secrets on the sixth of October, after the fifth sleepless night in a row.

"Dobby only wants to work. Master James never gives his Dobby enough work to do and the Hogwarts elves is starting to talk. The Hogwarts elves say Dobby is not a proper elf because his master does not give him proper work. Dobby does not have enough to do and the Hogwarts elves don't want to share their work with Dobby."

Harry stared at the elf in disbelief that the reason the elf had been acting up was because he was bored. He then snorted and shook his head as he asked, "Why didn't you just ask me for more work?"

"Dobby did but Master James was not listening to his Dobby."

"I'm sorry, Dobby, I should not have ignored you. I'd never owned a House Elf before I tricked Malfoy into selling you to me and the only other Elves I've had anything to do with are the ones from the castle kitchen. If you like, I can set you free now so that you can find a proper master."

"No. Dobby does not want a different master. Dobby wants work."

Harry sighed in resignation over his latest failed attempt to free the elf before he asked, "What kind of work did you want to do?"

"Dobby should be cooking and cleaning for Master James. Master James does not make enough messes though and he does not eat three proper meals a day like he is supposed to and the meals he does eat are made by the Hogwarts elves. Dobby is supposed to take care of Master James's house too but he doesn't know where he lives."

"Does it really bother you that much that the Castle Elves in the kitchen make my food?" Harry asked with a slight frown as he began to suspect that Dobby was just as prone to jealousy as Hedwig.

"House elves need work and those elves are doing Dobby's work."

"I can't just stop eating in the Great Hall because the professors get right cranky if I skip too many meals; they think I need to spend more time with the other students. But, if it bothers you that much, I will stop going to the Castle Elves for food on the days when I don't eat in the Great Hall with the others."

"Dobby would like that; Dobby will see to it that Master James doesn't miss any more meals."

Harry felt a brief twinge of nervousness over that declaration and promptly instructed, "Just don't make me too much to eat for each meal; I'm not used to eating lots and would not want to waste the food."

"Dobby understands."

"Okay. Was there anything else you wanted?"

"Dobby wants Master James to make more messes for Dobby to clean."

"I'm not very good at making messes because I wasn't allowed to make messes growing up."

Dobby visibly wilted in response to Harry's words and the thirteen year old felt terrible but he couldn't just forget eight years of conditioning (even Agil had failed to get Harry to break his need to keep everything neat and organized). He didn't want the elf to grow bored again though and even he knew that cooking a mere two or three small meals a day wasn't enough to keep any one busy (let alone a hyper active elf) and so he racked his brain for other 'jobs' he could give the elf. After a minute he came up with one idea that might work; so long as he could convince the elf to go along with it.

"You know, Dobby, Gaki is a rather messy bird; the other boys that sleep in my dorm complained about him stinking up the room all last year because the other owls kept chasing him out of the Owlry. I try to keep his perch clean but Hedwig doesn't like it when I pay too much attention to the owl. If you'd like, I could let you clean up after him instead. I'd even be willing to let you take over feeding and watering him. I bet you'd do a much better job than I ever could and Hedwig would be happier that I'm not spending quite as much time with Gaki."

"Dobby would be happy to take care of Master James's grumpy owl," Dobby quickly agreed as he went from depressed to delighted in the blink of an eye. "Dobby can even make homemade owl treats."

"Wonderful! Hedwig will even be pleased," Harry crowed softly as he felt just a little of his own depression lifting in response to the elf's enthusiasm. "Will that be enough to keep you busy now?"

"Dobby was hoping Master James would tell him where he lives so Dobby can clean his house and take care of the garden."

"I don't have a home," Harry replied in a pained voice as the destruction of Aincrad flashed through his mind. "The place I called home was destroyed two years ago and I've been locked up here in this castle ever since."

"Master James lives in Hogwarts all year long?"

"Not by choice. I would much rather live in the forest but it isn't safe for me right now with the dementors running loose in the Forbidden Forest because I don't know how to fight them yet. I hate being stuck inside all of the time. If I thought they'd let me, I'd rather move down here permanently than be forced to stay up in the castle all the time."

Harry froze in shock as he registered what he'd just said as he let his eyes take in the damp, dark, and depressing cavern he was sitting in. He then slowly nodded as he realized that he'd already claimed the Chamber of Secrets as his private hideaway for when he needed to escape from all of the NPCs that surrounded him day in and day out. If he was going to be forced to remain in the castle for another five years (if he couldn't find a way to escape sooner), then having a livable refuge he could retreat to when he couldn't slip off into the forest would make his imprisonment a little more bearable.

"Say, Dobby, how good are you at redecorating?" Harry asked as he let his eyes fall on the elf once more. "I think the Chamber of Secrets is going to need a new look if I'm going to be spending a lot of time down here until the dementors are removed from the grounds or I find a way to escape the game. Do you think maybe we could turn this place into an underground garden?"

"It will take Dobby a long time to clean up Master James's Secret Hiding Chambers," Dobby replied with wide eyes as he darted forward to wrap his arms around Harry's legs and Harry blinked in surprise as the Elf's NPC halo morphed into a gold Health Bar, a green HP Bar, and a blue MP Bar much like Hedwig's had a few weeks after he'd purchased her. "Dobby will have lots and lots of hard work to do to turn the Secret Hiding Chambers into a proper garden for Master James. Dobby will need to find lots of dirt, plants, lights, and proper furniture. Where will Master James sleep while Dobby makes his garden?"

"I can sleep in the Basilisk's nest or in one of the hidden rooms behind the statue where I found the treasure on the weekends and in my dorm during the week."

"Master James will let his Dobby make him a proper apartment in the hidden rooms?" Dobby half ordered and half demanded as he narrowed his eyes at Harry. "One with a real kitchen, a proper bedroom, and a bathroom?"

"I suppose it will need a dining room, a living room, and a library as well?" Harry asked with a small wry grin as he opened his Player Menu and withdrew two hundred galleons that he handed to the elf while the elf enthusiastically nodded in agreement and tucked the money into the red and gold pillow case the elf wore that had replaced the former tattered pillow case he'd worn when Harry first purchased him. "Well, I guess that means you'll have plenty of work to keep you busy for a while, ne? Let me know if you need more money to purchase whatever you need to get the job done."

Dobby eagerly agreed before he popped away to purchase cleaning supplies. Harry hoped he wouldn't regret encouraging the little elf to work himself to death before he snorted as he recalled just how troublesome the elf had been when he'd not had enough work to keep him occupied. It was far safer (for both his health and his sanity) to keep the little bugger happy and busy.

Harry would have two days of peace after dealing with Dobby's boredom before he found himself being confronted by an upset Hermione Granger with Neville Longbottom in tow while exiting the Chamber of Secrets to attend supper in the Great Hall (as required by his guardian and the school's staff) on Sunday evening. Harry had barely stepped up into the bathroom where the entrance of the Chamber of Secrets was located when he found himself face to face with Hermione and he'd nearly tumbled backwards into the open pipe behind him in shock. Once he got over the unexpectedness of his fellow third years waiting for him, Harry schooled his face back into its customary blank mask and made to brush by the pair only for Hermione to latch onto his arm and spin him around.

"Why, James? Why do you keep ignoring us? What did we do to you to make you hate us?" Hermione demanded as she held him in place.

"Let me go."

"No. Not until you tell us why. We've tried to be patient but you've been giving us the cold shoulder for over a month now and we have a right to know what it was we did to deserve you treating us worse than lepers."

"Let. Go."

"Why are you acting like this? Would it kill you to tell us what is going on?"

"If you don't tell us what we did to offend you, then we can't apologize to you for it and we won't know not to do it again," Neville added from where he was standing just a few feet behind Hermione.

Harry let out a low growl as he felt a spike of irritation; despite his relatively good weekend, he was in no mood to deal with pushy NPCs right now. Hedwig quickly reacted to the change in his emotions and shimmered into view in her customary place sitting on his shoulder, spread her wings wide in a show of aggression, and let out an angry hiss as she lifted her head off of Harry's hair. Both Neville and Hermione flinched in response but to her credit, Hermione's grip on Harry's arm never faltered.

"Let. Go. Now."

"Please, James…?" Hermione implored as her brown eyes filled with unshed tears that shimmered in the torchlight that filled the bathroom. "I thought… I thought we were friends…"

"I have no friends here. My friends are dead or lost to me because you people stole me away from them and forced me into this stupid world and refuse to let me leave," Harry spat back heatedly as his grief and fury slipped free from his rigid control because of the terrible memories of Aincrad's final moments still hovering so close to the surface after the dementor stirred them up at the end of the summer. "I never wanted to be here and I sure as hell don't want to stay here. All I want it is for all of you to leave me the hell alone and let me go."

Hermione's tears burst free and streamed down her face in response to Harry's harsh words and the moment he felt her grip on his arm loosen, he yanked his arm free of her hold. He made to leave at that point but found his way blocked by Neville's fist as the taller boy decked him in the mouth hard enough to split his lip and knock him back towards the still open entrance to the Chamber of Secrets behind him. Hedwig immediately let out a startled squawk and launched herself into the air when Harry lost his balance and floundered on the edge of the pipe.

Thankfully, he managed to stop himself from plunging down the steep tunnel by latching his right hand onto the closest sink to one side of the entrance while his left was thrown out to the side as a counter weight. The new position left him precariously perched over the opening with one foot on the rim of the entrance, one foot poised in the air to maintain his balance, and his arms spread out to either side – the feat accomplished mostly due to his master Acrobatics Skill. Once he was no longer in immediate danger of falling, Harry slowly brought his left hand up to gently prod his bleeding mouth while his tongue gently tested his teeth to see if any of them had been knocked loose.

He then lifted his head up so that he could keep an eye on the two NPCs that were in the bathroom with him; in case either of them attempted to attack him again. He found Hermione standing in the same place with both of her hands pressed over her mouth as tears continued to pour down her face while she stared at him.

"I'm sorry that you are unhappy and angry with whoever it was you think stole you away from your home," Neville stated coldly the moment Harry's gaze had flicked over to the taller boy. "But Hermione and I had nothing to do with that and you have no right to take your anger out on Hermione and make her cry. If you're going to be a bigger prat than Malfoy, then we don't need you to hang around us anyway."

"Neville," Hermione tearfully pleaded.

"No, Hermione. He was being a right berk and I won't let anyone get away with making you cry any more."

Harry sighed as a small thread of guilt pierced through his earlier anger; Neville was right, neither teen had been responsible for him being trapped in MaM (they weren't even real people in his mind). They'd also been two of the more tolerable underage NPCs he'd interacted with over the past two years and he should have taken their feelings (computer generated though he believed they were) into account. Agil would have been disappointed with him if he knew that Harry had taken his frustration out on an innocent and that knowledge sent a sharp spike of grief through Harry's heart.

Hedwig crooned softly in response to his anguish as she swooped down to land on his chest in order to offer him comfort like she always did when he was feeling down. Harry realized what she was going to do a split second before she did it and he cried out a frantic, "Hedwig, no!" in an attempt to stop her. Unfortunately, the occamy heard the order too late to change her course and her weight settled on his chest just long enough to compromise his precarious perch.

His right hand was pulled free of the sink as his body pivoted around in response to Hedwig's added weight and he plunged sideways into the open entrance below him. Pain exploded across the right side of his head as it struck the lip of the pipe on the way down and he let out a sharp cry before his breath was cut off when his back slammed into the curve of the pipe as the tunnel went from vertical to diagonal. He heard Hermione and Neville both yell out his name in shock and fear before he was swept away by the pull of gravity.

The next thing he knew his body was flying out of the lower entrance of the pipe where it hovered in the air for several precious seconds before he crashed down onto the pile of old bones that he hadn't bothered to clear away and rolled a short ways before he came to a stop on his side. He grunted with renewed pain as the impact jarred his injuries and felt his vision go dark for a moment as he hovered on the edge of unconsciousness. An echoing cry, like that of a siren, cut through the darkness at that point and he tried to clear the pain induced fog from his mind in an effort to identify the source out of fear that he was about to be attacked by some previously undiscovered monster.

Before he could fight through the pain enough to think clearly so he could identify the sound, the sound evolved into a pair of screams that pierced the air as Neville and Hermione flew out of the pipe one right after the other.

Neville landed just a few feet away from where Harry was laying (spraying him with a shower of displaced bones) while Hermione landed right on top of him; her elbow digging painfully into his kidneys. She scrambled off of him a heartbeat later before letting out a second scream as she caught sight of the huge pile of bones they'd landed on. Harry groaned and closed his eyes as the sharp echoes of her voice right beside his ear sent a shard of sharp pain through the pounding ache caused by the head injury he'd incurred when he'd fallen. Off to his right, there was a clattering of bones as Neville climbed up onto his feet.

"Please don't let me have killed him," Neville begged in a voice that shook with fear. "I just wanted him to stop being so mean to you… I never meant to kill him."

"He's not dead, Neville."

"Are you sure? He's not moving and I saw him hit his head. I never should have punched him but he'd just made me so angry and I didn't think…"

"Shuddup," Harry groused without any heat as Neville's frightened babbling only made his head hurt worse. "I can't sleep with you whining and moaning my ear off. You can yell at me all you want when my head stops ringing."

A light flared in the darkness at that point and Harry cracked one eye open to find a pale faced Neville holding his glowing wand above Hermione's head as the slightly older witch knelt back down beside him and gently pulled him over onto his back. Hermione's tear stained face only made him feel even more ashamed of his earlier outburst and Harry reclosed his eye and gingerly turned away from her.

"You have to stay awake, James," Hermione ordered briskly as the sound of ripping fabric filled the cavern. A second later, Harry felt a sharp stab of pain as she pressed a folded square of cloth against the side of his head where he'd hit the pipe on his way down. "We saw you hit your head pretty hard when you fell and you might have a concussion on top of the nasty gash. Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"Only in places that can't be healed so long as I am held prisoner here," Harry replied in a dead voice as he ignored the numerous bruises he knew he'd picked up from his tumble down the pipe. Before either of the other teens could respond to that, Hedwig dropped down from above their heads and landed in a clatter of bones beside Harry. The occamy twittered worriedly as she shifted back and forth on her legs and Harry imagined that she was peering nervously at him with her beady black eyes. Harry felt his lips curl into a strained smile as he softly reassured his familiar, "I'm alright, beautiful; I know you didn't knock me over on purpose."

"I'm sorry I punched you, James…"

"I probably deserved it," Harry replied around a sigh as Neville trailed off before he let the seductive pull of sleep wrap around him.

"It's my fault for pushing you when you were already stressed," Hermione contritely insisted around a sniffle. "Neville, can you tear me off another stripe of cloth from the bottom of my robes and help me tie the makeshift bandage in place?"

The sound of tearing fabric sounded again and then Harry felt a pair of hands gently lift his head off of the ground accompanied by the feeling of something soft sliding around his head as Hermione addressed him again, "James, keep talking; you can't fall asleep yet."

"You can start by telling us why you've been such a broody prat to us this past month," Neville bravely interjected now that he was no longer panicking under the fear that he'd killed another student.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"At least tell us what it was that we did to upset you then," Neville stubbornly insisted as he carefully lowered Harry's head back to the ground. "You owe us that much just for making Hermione cry."

"I can't," Harry replied as he reluctantly opened his eyes once more and briefly glanced at both of them.

"James…"

"It was nothing the two of you did," Harry interrupted before Neville could say more than his name. "I made a mistake and allowed myself to forget what I was fighting for until the dementors forced me to remember. I don't belong here. I can't be your friend because I'm not staying any longer than I have to and the moment I find my way out, I will disappear and no one from this world will ever see me again."

"Let us help you," Hermione blurted out as she grabbed hold of Harry's robes and leaned over him so she could meet his eyes. "We can help you research everything; I know you've been looking for something in the library instead of studying for classes. I can help you with that and when I go home for the holidays this winter; I can visit the library there for more information. Neville can even see if his grandmother knows anything because she's part of the Wizengamot. We're not useless… and we… we helped you last year."

"Hermione!" Neville hissed worriedly.

"Why? I already told you that I have no intention of being your friend."

"Because it is the right thing to do," Hermione replied softly as she ripped off another section of her robes, folded the strip into a small square, cast a freezing spell on the scrap of fabric, and pressed the icy bundle to Harry's now swollen split lip. "If you were kidnapped from your home, then not helping you would mean that I was helping a criminal keep you from your family. And even though you've been giving us the cold shoulder and avoiding us this year, you never picked on me and Neville like a lot of the other students did and still do."

"You're annoyingly persistent, I'll give you that," Harry muttered around the cloth pressed to his mouth. He then sighed as he closed his eyes and again let himself relax just a touch.

"Don't go to sleep, James; it hasn't been an hour yet. Why don't you tell us what you know about the person that is keeping you here? Talking will help you stay awake."

"_Mendoukusei._"

"Who is that?" Neville asked in confusion.

"That wasn't a person… that was just me complaining," Harry replied around yet another sigh. "I don't know who is responsible for me being here. I don't even know why I am here. One minute, I was in pure agony as the only home I ever knew crashed to pieces all around me before I passed out and the next thing I knew, I woke up here. I suppose it could be Kayaba Akihiko again but I'm pretty certain that he and Kirito killed each other after Kayaba killed Asuna. Besides, if it was Kayaba, then the others would still be here with me because he would have had no reason to single me out… unless he figured out about my new classification after the glitch caught me but I don't see how since I never actually met Heathcliff."

"Are you saying this isn't the first time you've been kidnapped?" Hermione asked as she furrowed her brow in confusion as she attempted to make sense out of Harry's ramblings.

"Not exactly kidnapped; it was more like I was held hostage alongside nine-thousand, nine-hundred, and ninety-nine other people under what amounted to a death sentence for two years. Close to four thousand people died during those two years. Asuna sacrificed herself to save Kirito and Kirito sacrificed himself so everyone else could go home and because I don't think he wanted to live without her. That should have been the end but it wasn't and I've been stuck here for two years with no way of knowing whether or not Klein, Lisbeth, or… or Agil are even alive."

"Have you tried sending them a letter?"

"There is no point… I already know they are not here," Harry replied in a defeated tone as he pushed Hermione's hand away from his mouth and rolled away from her so he could sit up. He let out a soft groan as fire raced across his back from the bruises he'd picked up after he'd fallen backwards into the Chamber's entrance. Once he was upright, the entire right side of his head began pounding from where he'd smacked it against the pipe and he contemplated on whether or not the injury was serious enough for him to warrant using one of his last remaining potions on it.

"I thought you said you weren't hurt anywhere else."

"I'm not… it's just a couple of bruises from when I hit the tunnel on the way down and my less than stellar landing at the end of the ride. I've had worse and they'll fade in a couple of days. The crack to my head, on the other hand, is going to be annoying but tousan always said I was hard-headed so I should be fine."

Hermione muttered something uncomplimentary under her breath about boys and Harry couldn't help but let out a soft snort of amusement. He then sighed yet again as he glanced at the two stubborn NPCs from the corner of his eye as he wondered what he was going to do about them. Part of him knew that there was a chance that he'd need them in order to finish this year's quest but another part of him couldn't help but fear that he was growing far too dependent upon them.

"How are we going to get out of here? Is there another exit?" Neville asked out of the blue as the taller boy finally gazed around the depressing cavern.

"We get out the same way we got in; only with less falling and more running."

"Don't be a smart-alack, James," Hermione admonished as she refreshed the freezing spell on the blood soaked cloth she held in her hand and moved around so she could press it against his mouth once more.

"I wasn't!" Harry protested as he leaned away from the slightly older witch. "As far as I know the pipes are the only way to get in and out of here. You saw me pop out up top earlier."

"How do you run up the pipe though? There's nothing to hold onto and no where to stand once it angles up," Neville countered as he walked over to the pipe in question and peered up inside of it.

"I use Sprint and once I get moving, I'm going so fast that it doesn't matter which direction I'm going in."

"I don't know… that sounds awfully risky; what happens if you don't run up far enough? Wouldn't you just fall back down the pipe again? It would be a lot easier if there were stairs or a ladder or something. Even a broom would be safer than just running into the pipe and hoping we have enough speed to make it to the top."

"Broom? Huh, never thought about using my broom," Harry muttered as he pulled his Nimbus Two-Thousand out of his Inventory (Dobby had retrieved it for him after he'd been attacked by the dementor) and held it out it to Hermione. "The two of you can borrow it and I'll run up like I usually do."

"I can't fly…" Hermione protested as she leaned away from the proffered broom.

"Neither can I," Neville was quick to point out when Harry offered it to him next.

"_Mendoukusei_," Harry complained as he reached up with one hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. "If neither of you can fly and neither of you think you can run or climb up the pipe; how are you going to get out?"

"Can't you fly us out?"

"Three people aren't going to fit on my broom and I don't know if I'm up to making three trips up and down the pipe right now. I suppose I can take a healing potion but I was hoping to keep those for a real emergency but supper is almost over and if we don't leave soon the two of you will get in trouble for being out of bounds."

"Won't you get in trouble as well?" Neville asked with a frown.

"Yes, but I don't particularly care since they won't kick me out no matter how many rules I break because that would mean they can't hold me here any longer. Getting a detention will be annoying but at least I don't have to worry about Lockhart this year."

"I'm sorry…"

"It was an accident, Neville," Harry cut in before Neville could finish his sentence as he returned the broom to his Inventory.

"You still owe Hermione an apology."

Harry shook his head, he was not going to apologize for being angry about being kept prisoner in this game; in his mind that would be the same as admitting that he belonged in this world and that was something he refused to believe. He had to hold onto the hope that there would come a day when he could break free and find the others; he needed them in his life or there was no point in living as far as he was concerned. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, he climbed up onto his feet and promptly staggered sideways as he was hit with a fresh wave of pain and dizziness. The only thing that kept Harry from crashing back to the ground was Hermione; the witch had jumped up onto her feet to grab hold of his robes to keep him from falling.

"Thanks," Harry murmured as he pulled free of her hands once he steadied himself before he opened his Menu to grab the healing potion only to pause as he considered his options.

He only had a couple of potions left and he still had the rest of the year to get through plus another four years (unless by some miracle he found a way out sooner) and the injury really wasn't that serious. So, if he didn't want to waste a potion on such a trivial injury, his choices were limited; he could drag the two third years back to the Chamber and the three of them could get out in the morning (earning detentions and point losses if they were caught), he could risk all of them getting hurt trying to fly or run out in his current condition, or he could reveal his ability to Teleport and take all three of them back to his dorm room.

"The Chamber it is," Harry decided as he figured a detention and a few lost points were worth avoiding further injury or revealing his ability to Teleport; something that he really didn't want the NPC adults of this world to know he could do, least they found some way of blocking said ability.

"What?"

"We'll have to stay in the Chamber of Secrets for tonight because I'm in no condition to get us out tonight. Dobby can get us something to eat since we will be missing supper and he can bring the two of you a change of clean clothes in the morning."

"Who is Dobby?"

"He's the House Elf that I tricked Malfoy into selling me last year," Harry replied as he slowly led his two peers towards the inner Chamber. "I originally planned to free him after that but the little bugger stubbornly refused to tell me how to free him after I saved him from his former family."

"You enslaved him?" Hermione cried indignantly.

"No, I did not," Harry retorted in a clipped tone; offended that she'd even suggest that he'd do to another what his relatives had basically done to him.

"House elves depend on the magic of a witch or wizard to survive, Hermione," Neville quickly explained before she could continue ranting (the other teen had heard the tone Harry had used and knew how vocal Hermione could be during one of her rants). "If they are not bound to a family or a magical building, then they will eventually die a slow, agonizing death of starvation because they can't take the magic they need from the air or the earth like the other magical creatures do. In exchange for the magic they receive, the house elves perform chores (like cooking and cleaning)."

"Why do they have to be forced to work for the person or family they are bonded to? Why not just allow them to take the magic?"

"Hermione, what would you do if you found a tick attached to your arm, drinking your blood?" Harry asked as he stopped right outside the large round door that led into the Chamber of Secrets and glanced at the brown haired witch.

"I'd kill it."

"Why? It's just taking a little blood from you. They need that blood to survive just as much as you do."

"But ticks are parasites and they carry diseases."

"Yet it is alright to force House Elves to become parasites by taking away their work? I spent the last week barely getting any sleep at all because Dobby kept changing the bedding on my bed and washing the clothes I was wearing five and six times a night _after_ I went to bed. Do you know why he was doing that? It was because he was angry at me for not giving him enough work. The other Elves in the castle insulted him because I wasn't allowing him to be a proper House Elf since I hadn't been giving him any work. He wasn't happy and he made certain I knew it. I shudder to think of what he'd have come up with next if I hadn't confronted him about the matter on Friday night."

"A house elf is never happy unless it has plenty of work to keep it occupied," Neville added solemnly. "Taking away a house elf's work would be like locking you out of every single library and book store in the world for the rest of your life."

Harry actually snickered at the look of pure horror on Hermione's face over the thought of never being allowed to enter another library or book store again for the rest of her life. He felt a lance of pain pierce his heart a moment later as the way Hermione and Neville interacted together (as a pair of siblings that loved to tease each other every chance they got) briefly reminded him of Lisbeth and Klein. Turning away from the pair and the pain they stirred, Harry opened the door and stepped into the Chamber of Secrets.

Twenty minutes later, the three of them were being served a small feast by an excited Dobby (who was thrilled to have two extra people to feed). After their meal, they would be returned to their dorm rooms by the elf when the eager-to-please creature learned they couldn't get back to the Gryffindor Tower on their own.

Far above the Chamber of Secrets, a lone second year that had been locked outside of her common room without her wand and shoes just before supper was served stumbled across a room filled to the brim with discarded items where she would find a tarnished diadem that was tainted with more than just age.

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**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Mendoukusei – troublesome (also translated as this sucks or what a drag and is Nara Shikamaru's catch phrase from Naruto &amp; Naruto Shippuden)  
Otousan/tousan – father

**Game Terminology:**

HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
MP – **M**agic **P**oints (Only in MaM)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

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**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	19. Demons

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Nineteen: Demons

_October 2023 through November 2023_

The rest of October passed by fairly quickly as Harry buried his grief and once more moved through his days with the same silent efficiency that had seem him through the two previous years. He also grudgingly resumed attending the weekly Quidditch practices with the rest of the team and the nightly study sessions with Hermione and Neville though they moved their study location from the Gryffindor Common Room to the Library so that Harry could continue his extracurricular research in between assignments and revision.

The two third years had also taken to tagging along with Harry on the weekends when Harry slipped away to hide in the Chamber of Secrets (they even joined him on Hogsmeade weekends after they had learned that Harry was banned from visiting the village). Hermione to politely badger Dobby for more information on house elves and to keep her promise to help Harry with his research and Neville ostensibly to make certain Harry didn't make Hermione cry again. Both taller teens also tentatively offered suggestions for the renovations of the Chamber.

Neville was especially helpful in providing the names of those plants that were hardy enough to survive in an artificial environment. Hermione, on the other hand, made practical suggestions that would see the underground garden thriving once it was complete (such as draining and cleaning the underground pool that was supplied by an underground freshwater spring and piping the fresh water into the planned kitchen and through a sprinkler system to water the plants that would be brought in). She also suggested that a proper pond be made out of the pool for aesthetics.

After the second time the pair followed him into the Chamber on a weekend, Harry decided that he needed to find or make another entrance to the Chamber so that he didn't have to haul the other two back up the slide or impose on Dobby to take them back and forth to the tower all of the time. It would take Dobby a month to make the new entrance with the help of a younger female elf from the kitchens; one of the elves that had grown particularly fond of Harry during his first two years and the elf that used to always pack his supply baskets.

Dobby could have done it by himself but because he wasn't bonded to the castle, he had been limited on how much he could change the castle. Tizzy, the female elf, would eventually spend far more time helping Dobby than working in the kitchen because she'd had the least amount of work to do as the youngest elf currently bonded to Hogwarts. Harry didn't mind her hanging around because she tended to keep Dobby occupied when the elf wasn't cooking or working on the various renovations that were being made to the Chamber of Secrets.

The relative peace of the castle would be broken on Halloween night for the third year in a row when a blood covered sixth year muggleborn wearing Hufflepuff colors burst into the Great Hall and collapsed on the floor. Panic ensued when the young man was heard telling the staff that he'd been attacked and tortured by an unknown person. The escaped Rookwood was immediately suspected of being the culprit the moment the teen announced he'd been hit with the Cruciatus Curse more than once. Several loud wand blasts filled the hall and calmed the students as everyone turned to face Dumbledore standing up at the staff table.

"Please remain calm and return to your seats. All students will remain in the Great Hall while the staff investigate the scene of the attack. I will be leaving our Head Boy and Head Girl in charge while we are gone and all Prefects are to do a head count to determine if there are any other students missing," Dumbledore ordered as the staff promptly began heading towards the door.

"What is the Cruciatus Curse?" Harry half demanded under his breath while his eyes tracked the adults as they left the room. "And why in the world didn't they leave any adults aside from the nurse behind to protect the students in case the Great Hall was attacked while they were all out searching?"

"At least they didn't send the students back to their Common Rooms this time," Hermione muttered from where she and Neville were sitting directly across from Harry as her right hand unconsciously rose to press up against the right side of her chest (where Harry would one day learn that she carried a rather nasty scar from the troll attack in their first year – which had happened before Harry had woken up in the world of MaM).

"The Cruciatus Curse is one of the Unforgivables," Neville hoarsely croaked; his face pale and his eyes wide with fear as he stared fixedly at the tortured student that Madam Pomfrey was stabilizing in preparation of transporting him to the Hospital Wing.

"What the hell is an Unforgivable?"

"They are three of the worst curses in existence," George replied as he dropped down to sit beside Harry as the younger teen asked his question. "The Imperius Curse, the Cruciatus Curse, and the Killing Curse."

"Using any one of them is a one-way ticket to Azkaban; no questions asked," Fred added as he dropped down on Harry's other side. "Unless your name is Malfoy and you can bribe your way out of being sentenced."

"Hence, why they are called Unforgivable," George finished solemnly.

"Okay, I'm familiar enough with the Killing Curse after the last two years but what do the other ones do?"

"The Cruciatus causes pain," Neville stated as he ducked his head and began shaking as his hands clenched into fists.

"It doesn't just cause pain; it's pure torture according to what we've overheard from our parents," George corrected lowly as he glanced towards the injured Hufflepuff.

"Death Eaters used to use it to drive people insane back when You-Know-Who was still around," Fred added as he worriedly peered at Neville who'd flinched violently at the word insane.

"Are you alright, Neville," Hermione asked as she gently laid a hand on the obviously distraught boy's arm.

"F…fine," Neville stuttered as he flinched away from Hermione's touch and Harry frowned at the taller boy because he'd not heard him stutter since halfway through their first year.

"And the last one you mentioned," Harry asked of George in order to draw attention away from Neville.

"Mind control," Fred answered as he plucked the dinner roll off of Harry's plate. "When it's properly cast…"

"It can make you do whatever the caster wants you to do…" George added as he reached across Harry and snagged the roll from Fred's hands.

"Even if it is something you'd normally never do; like kill or torture your own family," Fred finished as he picked up another roll from the nearby platter and pegged his brother in the head with it.

"A lot of the people that were accused of being Death Eaters were set free because they used the excuse that they'd been Imperiused by You-Know-Who and forced to do the terrible things they did," George explained as he ignored the roll that bounced off of his head and picked up a serving spoon filled with mashed potatoes, smeared the potatoes on the roll, and lobbed it up into the air where it eventually landed on the head of Marcus Flint (the current captain of the Slytherin Quidditch Team).

"Good shot, ole chap," Fred complimented as he dipped another roll into a boat of gravy before sending it flying across the room where it hit Draco Malfoy right between the eyes. "Malfoy's dad was one of those that were let go with a slap on the wrist by claiming the Imperius Defense."

"Thanks old bean, you didn't do too bad there yourself," George told Fred as he launched another potato smeared roll; this time hitting a seventh year Ravenclaw between the shoulder blades before adding, "Dad said Lucius Malfoy was rotten to the core and a Death Eater through and through but he never served even a day in Azkaban because he was one of those that had claimed to be Imperiused and he lined the Ministry's coffers and paid off a bunch of people in order to get his charges dropped."

"Gran said the Malfoys were the worst sort right after the Le…Lestranges and the Bl…Blacks," Neville added as he watched Fred throw another gravy soaked roll at some hapless Slytherin. "Lucius is a cold calculating op…opportunist and Draco is turning out to b…be the same way on t…top of being a sp…spoiled b…brat. Draco is half Bl…Black after all, on his mo…mother's side, and she's… she's related to… to _her._"

"To who?" Hermione asked as she furrowed her brow.

"B…Bella… Bellatrix Lestrange."

"My supposed godfather is a Black," Harry interjected pensively as he caught the chicken leg that had been about to hit him in the face and calmly offered the unharmed piece of meat to Hedwig who happily devoured it. "He'd been locked up in Azkaban until after the whole rat-man fiasco in our first year. Lucius Malfoy should have been rotting in Azkaban after he tried to kill me last year in front of a bunch of witnesses after the whole Chamber of Secrets thing at the end of the year. Slippery bastard somehow wriggled his way out of being charged."

"You're talking about Sirius Black," Fred exclaimed in some surprise as he turned away from the food fight he'd helped instigate to look at Harry. "I remember mum going on and on about how there had to be some kind of mistake after she learned he'd been framed by Pettigrew; said Black was always cold, reckless, and just as insane as the rest of his family."

"That's only because mum resents anyone associated with the Black family after the Lestranges and Dolohov killed Uncle Gideon and Uncle Fabian," George sadly reminded his brother.

"Well, there's no question that Sirius is more than a little crazy," Harry admitted with a shrug as he briefly recalled the time he'd spent with the NPC. "He's not a bad sort though; so long as you enjoy dodging twenty bludgers and annoying hexes being fired at you as you fly a broom and try to hit fifty practice snitches with paint spells all the while trying not to crash into the walls of a dimly lit room."

Both twins burst out laughing while Hermione and Neville had horrified looks on their faces; both younger NPCs were afraid of flying. The twins were just as crazy as his godfather though, so Harry wasn't surprised that they'd found the idea of dodging spells and bludgers while trying to tag snitches humorous. Meanwhile, all around them, the Prefects and the two Head Students (one of which was Percy Weasley) were trying to restore order out the chaos that the twins had started.

By the time the staff returned to the room, the Great Hall was a complete and utter mess; as were all of the students bar Harry, the four sitting with him, and a handful of older students that had wisely shielded themselves against the various edible missiles that were launched their way. It took the staff a good three hours to clean everything up and round up the handful of missing students that hadn't been inside of the Great Hall when the attack was first reported so that the students could sleep in the Great Hall that night while the staff continued to search the castle for any sign of Rookwood.

The next few days were stressful for the majority of the NPCs in MaM and Harry tried not to get angry at the way they seemed to jump at shadows every time he turned around. Worse, the staff had utterly contaminated the crime scene with their footprints and magical signatures; meaning that he couldn't even use his Tracking Ability to pick up the culprit's trail. If that wasn't enough of a problem, Harry also had a number of adults closely monitoring him. He wasn't certain if it was because they were trying to keep him from completing this year's quest (which he assumed was hunting down and stopping the attacker), suspected him to somehow be involved in the attack, or worried that he might be the next victim.

When two full weeks had gone by without another attack and with no further evidence that the escaped Death Eater was hanging around the castle, all of the students (bar Harry and by extension Hermione and Neville who took their cues from him) began relaxing once more. The staff, like Harry, were still on high alert as they kept a close watch on all of the students; not a single one of the adults in the castle forgetting the rather constant string of attacks that had plagued the school the previous year. Extracurricular activities were also being closely monitored by the staff in order to watch over the students while they were outside of classes.

On Friday, November seventeenth, Harry was confronted by Dumbledore as the trio of third years made their way to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom on their way down to the Chamber. Hermione and Neville hovered just behind the shorter teen during the entire confrontation and gaped at the accusations that were flying fast and thick between Headmaster and student.

"Mr. Potter, you are from this day forward forbidden from entering any of the girls' bathrooms within the castle. Your indecent behavior has gone on long enough," Dumbledore intoned as he all but scowled at the four foot wizard. "It is also past time that you stopped running off to hide during the weekends, you have a responsibility towards your studies and if you do not start taking your assignments seriously, then you will force me to hold you back in order to repeat the year. I am also most disappointed in your continued attempts at isolating yourself from your peers."

"I have not entered any of the girls' bathrooms in the castle; the bathroom behind you is an out-of-order bathroom that no one uses outside of romantic trysts. So therefore I have not been behaving in an indecent manner," Harry countered impassively. "As to your second complaint, I have maintained the highest grades out of my year group since I was forced into this stupid world and therefore you have no grounds whatsoever to hold me back a year. Furthermore, I have told you before that I have no interest in associating with anyone inside of this world because I do not intend to stay here one day longer than I have to."

"I grow weary of your insistence at treating life as some kind of game, Mr. Potter; it is high time that you grow up and face reality and if I have to hold you back to repeat a year in order to curb your childish fits, then I will do so until you accept your place. And it will not matter what grades you have achieved as I have the right as both your Headmaster and as your guardian to see that you are properly educated. On top of that I have an obligation to insure that you are capable of entering society and as it stands, you are a danger to both yourself and those around you because of your delusional beliefs."

"So you would continue to keep me a prisoner here simply because you are displeased that I refuse to accept your lies as truth? You have yet to prove to me that any of your fanciful stories are real."

"I have offered you proof on many occasions and you continue to ignore said proof…"

"If your claims were valid, then I would consider them to be truth but all you have done, is grasp at straws in your efforts to force me into believing your lies. All of your arguments are full of holes and your so called proof is nothing more than empty words; you have yet to provide a single shred of _tangible_ evidence to support your claims."

"Mr. Potter, Harry…"

"Do not call me that! My. Name. Is. James. No one has the right to call me by my first name, least of all you!"

"Mr. Potter, don't you think this charade has gone on long enough?" Dumbledore wearily asked as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Absolutely; so, the sooner you let me go, the sooner you won't have to worry about me. I'll be more than happy to go on my merry way so that I can track down my father."

"And I have told you repeatedly that James Potter is dead; your father died the same night as your mother."

"The man and woman that you insist on calling my parents mean nothing to me because for all I know you pulled their names out of a hat and based their description on my own appearance. I also refuse to believe that my father is dead and nothing you say will ever convince me otherwise."

"I'm not going to sit here and argue with you anymore, Mr. Potter. I'm simply here to tell you that you are not allowed to enter this bathroom any longer and to inform you that you need to stop visiting the Chamber of Secrets. It is far too dangerous for you to be wandering about the castle alone and it is unacceptable for you to drag your fellow students into the dangerous situations that you always go seeking."

"So I am a prisoner? You admit it now?"

"We've been over this, Mr. Potter. You are not a prisoner; you are a student and you have to follow the rules just like everyone else…"

"So you say but your actions say otherwise. If I was a student, then I would be free to visit Hogsmeade Village like the rest of the students in year three or higher and I would not be locked up here in this castle day after day all year round if I was a mere student. I find it highly suspect that you are my guardian, my headmaster, and my jailer all rolled into one while acting as if you are some benevolent grandfather doing me a great favor."

"I would not need to place restrictions on you if you simply followed the rules and as I said earlier, your continued insistence that life is some kind of game makes you a danger to yourself and others which means that it is not safe for me to allow you to leave. You also have no where else to go and I would not set you out on the streets to live as a vagrant."

"If your rules weren't designed to keep me weak and ineffective while keeping me a prisoner inside of this dreary old castle, then I would gladly follow them but you continuously hold me back and constantly restrict my freedom. And I have never attacked any person that hasn't attacked me first."

"Enough, Mr. Potter; this discussion is over. If you disobey me and set a single foot inside of the bathroom behind me, I will deduct House Points and assign you detentions."

"Fine," Harry snapped back angrily as he backed away from the Headmaster. "Dobby!"

"Master James called for his Dobby?" Dobby inquired as he popped up right behind the diminutive wizard.

"Yes, it appears that I am not allowed to use the bathroom entrance to the Chamber of Secrets any longer, will you please transport me directly to the Chamber so that I can continue my weekend studies?"

"Dobby will be happy to help, Master James. Is Master James's Grangy and Longybottoms needing Dobby to takes them too?"

"Yes!" Hermione replied before Harry could answer the elf.

Before Dumbledore could interfere (verbally, magically, or physically), the little elf took hold of all three students and popped away with them in tow. Needing to burn off his frustration and vent a little, Harry asked Dobby to conjure up targets with Dumbledore's face on them for him. Harry then spent the next half hour blasting the targets to smithereens with the Blasting Curse before he spent another half an hour using them as target practice for his knife throwing; Dobby creating new targets each time one of them was no longer usable. After that, he felt far calmer and merely sent a wide array of mostly harmless jinxes and hexes at the targets in a steady stream of colored lights as he linked the spells together in one continuous barrage until he started to feel tired.

"How are you able to cast so many spells all together like that, James?" Hermione tentatively asked with more than a little awe in her voice from where she and Neville had been watching Harry take out his frustration on the conjured targets.

"Practice… and Sirius taught me how to link the spells together based on the flow of their incantations and the associated wand movements so that one spell flows fluidly into the next without being jarring," Harry replied with a shrug of his shoulder.

"How long has he been teaching you stuff? And has he been teaching you other things like different spells or just tricks for easier casting?" Neville asked with a slight frown.

"He started the summer after first year and mostly he just teaches me little tricks to improve my casting speed and accuracy. He did teach me a few spells but for the most part he just works with me on the stuff I already know until I can cast each spell without thinking about it. Sirius helps me practice dodging and evasion as well."

"The bludgers and snitches training?" Hermione inquired with a slight shudder.

"Yes. It's fun; almost like a game so long as Sirius isn't helping the bludgers target me."

"Can you teach me… us?" Neville asked bravely as his eyes lingered on the damaged targets still littering the floor of the Chamber.

"Teach you…?" Harry repeated in confusion. "Teach you what?"

"The tricks Mr. Black taught you… to make casting easier."

"Please, James?" Hermione pleaded as she bit her lip. "I've never seen any of the older students cast the way you did and with Rookwood on the loose and the attack… It was terrible last year, always being afraid. And… and in first year when the troll… I don't want to be useless if someone attacks me or one of you."

"I don't know… I've never taught anyone before. I suppose… I suppose I could try," Harry slowly replied as he glanced between the two taller teens as they gave him hopeful looks and wondered if that was part of this year's quest. "Dobby, can you please clean up my messes and set up three new targets?"

The elf quickly complied before he left the three children to their practice while he went back to cleaning up the hidden rooms behind Slytherin's statue. Harry then had Hermione and Neville each pick one spell they thought was the most effective spell they knew and had them practice casting it on the targets. He told them to practice the spell until they could cast it without thinking about it or until they were too tired to cast; which ever came first.

Neville chose to cast the Tripping Jinx (a spell that had been used on him repeatedly over the past two years) and Hermione decided to practice the Full Body-Bind Curse. Harry watched them for a moment and offered hints and tips as needed before he began practicing the Disarming Charm (one of the spells he'd learned during the previous year that he had not yet mastered).

Even though Harry had tired himself out when working off his frustration earlier, he still lasted far longer than either Hermione or Neville did during the course of their practice. Hermione complained but Harry told her that she'd need to build up her stamina if she wanted to cast longer; meaning she'd need to spend more time practicing her spell casting and less time with her nose in a book. Neville had snickered over the look of indignation on her face after that revelation right up until Harry told Neville that meant he'd need to spend less time in the greenhouses during his free time if he wanted to increase his stamina as well.

Dobby brought the three of them supper at that point and they took a break to eat. Throughout the meal there were several times when it looked like Hermione wanted to ask Harry a question but each time she opened her mouth, Neville would nudge her with his elbow or foot. Harry was thankful for that, as he suspected that Hermione wanted to ask him about his earlier argument with the headmaster and he really didn't want to talk about that right now. After they finished eating, the rest of the evening was spent working on their accuracy as they fired paint spells at the fifty practice snitches that Sirius had purchased over the summer; all three of them competing to see who could mark the most snitches with their chosen color.

Eight days after his confrontation with Dumbledore, Harry was standing in the middle of the Quidditch pitch in the pouring rain with the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team and all seven members of the Slytherin Quidditch Team for the first game of the season. Thirteen of the fourteen students on the field were grumbling about the foul weather but Harry had fought in far worse conditions within the dungeons of Aincrad so he simply waited for Madam Hooch to give them the signal so that they could start the game. They were told to mount their brooms just seconds later and in no time at all, the bludgers and snitch had been released and Madam Hooch was tossing the Quaffle skywards.

The storm made it difficult for Harry to use his Listening Skills and as a result, there were a few rather close calls with the bludgers due to him barely hearing them in time to dodge. The Slytherins were quick to notice and were soon using the storm against Harry but he wasn't too worried because while they were so busy trying to get one up on him, the Gryffindor Chasers were pelting the Slytherin Keeper and racking up the points. Harry took full advantage of their fixation on him and egged the Slytherins on in their efforts in order to allow the Gryffindor chasers to increase the points lead; treating the constant attacks as one of his training sessions.

An hour into the game, Harry finally spotted the snitch and he took off after it without any hesitation. The tiny golden ball led him on a merry goose chase while the Slytherin Seeker dogged his heels once the older teen, a sixth year by the name of Terence Higgs, finally noticed Harry's mad dash about the pitch. It was a grand chase in and around the stands with the driving rain hindering both eye sight and hearing and Harry loved every second of it as he truly had to work to follow the snitch through the murky gloom (a first for him since he'd joined the team).

Twenty minutes into the chase, his fingers brushed against the wings of the tiny ball as it shot straight up into the sky and he cursed the added drag of the wet broom bristles because he knew he'd have had the snitch if not for slight reduction in forward momentum caused by the current conditions. Harry didn't hesitate to chase after the snitch, pressing himself flat against the shaft of his broom in an effort to reduce the drag. Higher and higher he chased the blasted ball and he half sensed the Slytherin Seeker falling backwards out of nervousness when a flash of lightning lit up the sky.

The booming crack of thunder followed just seconds later and set Harry's jaw to aching and his hair follicles to tingling with how close he'd been to both the bolt of pure electricity and the crashing of the clouds. He ignored the discomfort as he lunged for the snitch once more. His fingers wrapped around the tiny ball just seconds later and Harry let out a hoarse cry of triumph as he brought his broom to a stop.

He barely had a full second to appreciate the rather difficult catch when the chill of the storm turned freezing in an instant and the noise of the pounding the rain was replaced with the familiar blaring of a System Warning as dozens of dementors converged on him and pulled his darkest memories to the forefront of his mind once more. Harry let out an agonized cry of rage and grief that was lost in the storm as Aincrad's final moments began playing out in his mind once more as he tumbled backwards from his broom.

The dementors followed him down, chasing after him and the pain of losing everything was soon replaced by the memory of the terrible battle between Kayaba and Kirito while his broom was blown into the violent branches of the Whomping Willow. That memory had barely finished playing out before he was drawn into the battle against the Skull Reaper as he saw Agil take a hit again and again. Harry never heard the screams of the students in the stands as people finally noticed him plunging towards the ground with the hoard of dementors rushing after him like hounds on the heels of a fox.

A series of short memories featuring each of the battles where he'd been wounded or where he'd seen one of his handful of friends get wounded followed on the heels of that terrible final Boss battle and ended with the two Carrion Crow attacks from the day that Agil had learned Harry's true age. A scream of sheer agony was then torn from Harry as the dementors pulled up the six hours that he'd spent trapped in the glitch that changed his life.

He was fast approaching the ground at that point and his magic rushed to his aide as it formed the familiar golden shield around his body just before he would have slammed into the ground head first. At the same time as the shield formed, a dozen silvery shapes rushed towards him as the staff members chased off the attacking dementors. The shield protecting Harry's fragile body dissipated the moment his body settled to the ground once his downward momentum had been halted.

The four foot wizard then curled up in a fetal position as his worst memories continued to tear through his mind in rapid succession; despite the dementors' influence being removed. Choked screams and sobs issued forth from his mouth as he trembled with remembered pain and grief. People began crowding in around him in an effort to find out if he'd been hurt in his three hundred meter drop and the feel of hands pulling at him only made his nightmares all the more real and caused his magic to lash out violently in response.

A couple of the staff members attempted to stun him in order to calm him down so that he could be scanned for injuries but his magic shielded him from the spells due to the emotional torment that he was still suffering. Fawkes appeared at the request of the Headmaster but the moment the phoenix attempted to calm Harry with his song, Hedwig appeared from out of the storm and let out an angry screech as she attacked the immortal bird in order to chase him off. The jealous occamy was unwilling to let Fawkes near Harry for any reason.

The staff began herding the gawking students off of the pitch at that point in order to get them out of the rain and give Harry space and privacy while they waited for him (and his magic) to calm down. It took nearly an hour for exhaustion to put an end to Harry's uncontrolled magical self-defense so that Madam Pomfrey could approach the diminutive wizard and scan his body for injuries. Relief rippled through the adults still present when it became apparent that the child had suffered no physical injuries from his deadly plummet from the sky.

There was still the emotional and mental trauma to deal with though and the prognosis was grim based upon his reaction to a single dementor's attack earlier in the summer. This time he'd been attacked by close to three dozen of the creatures, the attack had lasted three or four times longer, and they'd actually managed to disrupt his soul during the attack.

Harry would end up spending a full week in the Hospital Wing in a potion induced coma so that his soul could heal and to keep the thirteen year old from disappearing like he had immediately after the first attack. Once he woke up, Madam Pomfrey would keep him another four days to monitor his mental and emotional health before reluctantly releasing him.

All attempts by the various bullies from all four houses to taunt or make fun of him over his reaction to the dementors once he was released were met with dead emerald eyes set in a blank mask. Those bullies with half a brain usually never made a second attempt after facing Harry's emotionless stare and those that were too stupid to get a hint would earn a thorough pranking from the Weasley twins. Attempts by the staff to speak to him regarding the terrible memories that the dementors had stirred up were met with the same response that Harry gave to his would-be tormentors.

Hermione and Neville shadowed Harry during this time and often drove off the bullies that sought to attack him or passed names to the twins when the bullies just couldn't take a hint but never pushed him to talk. Both of them were far too shaken after witnessing the attack, Harry's fall, and his terrible reaction to the attack. That and they had not forgotten what had happened the first time they'd tried to push Harry (even if the end result had been a truce between the three of them); if only because something told them that this time the outcome would be far less pleasant.

It helped that Harry didn't make any efforts to chase them away when they joined him in the library or down in the Chamber of Secrets despite the fact that he had stopped speaking all together (not even bothering to answer any of the subject related questions that the staff directed at him during classes – no matter how many points they took from him or how many detentions they threatened him with).

Harry's blanket of antipathy wouldn't be broken until the start of the winter holidays, when his in-game godfather arrived with the box of practice bludgers in hand and an unfamiliar wizard in tow.

* * *

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

* * *

**AN:** _Okay, just a couple of things I wanted to clarify. First, Dumbledore is not evil in this story. Nor is he a manipulative old codger with designs on Harry's fortune. He is an old man who is struggling to protect a child from something that he doesn't understand. He means well, but as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. He will eventually be made to see the error of his ways. _

_Next, Harry's reaction to the dementors. Some of you might think that Harry is overreacting to the dementors but please keep in mind that they are forcing him relive nearly two years worth of terror as they draw upon his worst memories. His memories of what happened SAO are also raw and still very much fresh because he's not yet dealt with any of it. Don't forget, he was only nine when he got trapped in SAO and he therefore did not really have the maturity to cope with the negative aspects of being caught up in the game (especially the constant threat of death). He will eventually make his peace with the past but is it going to take time._

_And no, he will never hear his mother's final moments when exposed to the dementors due to them being buried beneath his memories of SAO._

_Last point; you will notice that certain characters are not playing all that big of a part in this story and there is a reason for that. The reason why you aren't seeing much of Ron will be explained later in the story; though part of the reason was because he ended up getting petrified instead of Hermione. Ginny's absence will also be explained later. The complete lack of Snape's vitriol was already explained; he is avoiding Harry because of how and where Harry was found. And the last one that needs mentioning is the lack of Draco/Harry interaction. _

_There are three main reasons for Draco's absence; first, Harry never snubbed Draco over Ron's friendship. Second, Harry just doesn't see him as important. Meaning; that Draco is there and he is making comments in the background but Harry ignores him or pranks him as needed. And number three, I see Snape as having warned all his Slytherins to tread warily around this Harry because of how closely Dumbledore is watching him and because of Harry's apparent mental instability (the Slytherin Head of House worried his snakes will end up dead; especially after Harry's encounter with Quirrell). _

_That's also why Draco is not on the Slytherin Quidditch Team; there was no Harry to goad him and taunt him over the broom and therefore no reason for Malfoy to by brooms for the team or Draco to whine about wanting to be a Seeker. I have not yet decided whether or not I will throw him on the team in the future but if I do, it won't happen until fifth year. There will be some Draco snide and snarl in the future but that won't happen until around Harry's fifth year as well. _

**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	20. Patronus

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty: Patronus

_Friday, December 22, 2023 07:45 AM_

Harry sat at the foot of the main stairs with his arms folded across his chest and a blank, icy mask on his face while Professor McGonagall stood sentinel right behind him. The majority of the other students were being escorted out to the train so that they could spend the holidays with their families. Harry had fully intended to disappear down into the Chamber of Secrets as soon as he woke up but he'd been waylaid by Professor McGonagall and escorted to the Entrance Hall where he had been instructed to wait.

It was actually a rather cruel order because the thirteen year old was forced to watch the rest of the students laughing and chatting as they walked out of the door with the freedom that he lacked.

Neville and Hermione stopped to say goodbye to Harry and while he didn't drop his mask for them or even open his mouth to speak to them, he did acknowledge them with a stiff nod; which was far more than he'd given anyone else since the attack. Not long after those two had passed through the room, the flow of students exiting the castle tapered off as the last of those leaving passed through the door. Harry assumed that his punishment was over at that point and climbed to his feet to leave; the teen wrongly assuming that Dumbledore had wanted him to watch the leaving students as a form of punishment. He was therefore a bit surprised when Professor McGonagall told him not to go anywhere yet.

Fifteen minutes after the students had left; the reason for his continued presence in the Entrance Hall became apparent as Sirius Black stepped into the castle followed by a worn and weary looking wizard. Harry studied the new wizard intently for a moment; noting the faded scars on the man's face, his light brown hair liberally peppered with gray, the rather well worn appearance of his robes, and the familiar NPC halo above his head. Inspection complete, Harry dismissed the man and focused on his game-supplied godfather as the often childish man walked up to him and inspected him in turn.

"Albus would like to speak with you at some point before the end of the holidays, Sirius," Professor McGonagall stated as she stepped away from Harry. "And he wished me to remind you and your godson that Mr. Potter is not to leave the safety of the castle for any reason. It is good to see you again, Remus; if you need it, your usual refuge is available for use while you are here."

"Thank you, Professor McGonagall," the weary wizard that had followed Sirius into the castle stated; leading Harry to assume that the man's name was Remus.

"Tell the old goat I'll think about seeing him, Minnie," Sirius stated as he frowned at Harry in concern. "You can also tell him that he'd better have a damn good reason for keeping those demons on the school grounds after they've shown their willingness to attack the students; my godson in particular. I can accept that the first attack was merely an accident and a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time but even you can't deny that those demons willfully attacked an entire stadium of students and staff last month or that my godson was the focus of the attack; seeing as how close to three dozen of the monsters chased him off his broom."

"I will see to it that Albus receives your message," Professor McGonagall replied with a slight scowl that was in response to both the reference to the recent attack and for the rather playful nickname that the man had called her. The stern witch then turned to glance at Harry as she added, "Do behave yourself, Mr. Potter."

Harry stared at the witch for half a minute before he simply turned his back on her and started up the stairs without saying a word. The witch let out an explosive sigh but didn't take him to task like she normally would have; it was the same response he'd been giving to everyone since the dementor attack on the Quidditch game, after all. The thirteen year old's feet followed an invisible path that they'd walked a hundred times or more as he climbed up the stairs to the second floor and the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. He sensed both men catch up with him just a few minutes later, though he gave no outward sign that he knew they were there.

He'd just walked passed the entrance to the out-of-order bathroom when Sirius spoke up in confusion, "Er, James? You just passed the entrance…"

The teen ignored him and continued walking down the hall until he reached the tapestry of a huge dragon that hung over a hidden alcove. He slipped into the alcove without any hesitation but instead of activating the obvious short cut that would normally take him up to the seventh floor; he leaned down to shift a thin tarp-like rug that had been painted to look exactly like the stone floor to reveal a hidden trapdoor. Sirius and the man he assumed was named Remus joined him just as he dismantled the traps that were protecting the trapdoor.

He then treated the two men to one of his blank stares before he opened the trapdoor to reveal a rope ladder leading down into the inky blackness below. Harry hadn't really wanted to share the location of the recently completed new entrance down into the Chamber of Secrets but knew his supposed godfather would be annoyingly persistent in tracking him until he found it on his own. The man was stubborn like that. The fact that Harry trusted the NPC up to a certain point, much like he sort of trusted Hermione and Neville, was the only reason that Harry hadn't tried to ditch the two men the moment it became clear that they were following him.

It was with a large measure of resignation that Harry gestured for the two men to precede before him down into the open hole in the floor. Sirius didn't hesitate to follow the unspoken order but the other man frowned briefly as he glanced between the open trapdoor and Harry before he grudgingly followed the dog animagus down the rope ladder. Harry watched them descend into the shadows below until he could not longer see them before he closed the trapdoor, reset the traps, and smoothed the rug back into place.

A quick scan of the hallway outside of the alcove using the Supersensory Charm Sirius had taught him for his twelfth birthday in combination with his Listening and Detection Skills insured that no one else had followed him. The moment he had confirmed he was alone, Harry summoning Dobby to transport him down into the room beneath the trapdoor with a snap of his fingers; his sudden arrival startling both of the older wizards. He felt a brief urge to smirk at the two men before it was smothered beneath the weight of the grief, guilt, anger, and frustration he felt at still being trapped in the world of MaM.

Turning his back on the pair, he lit the tip of his wand with a silent Lumos before moving through the room; which was actually more of a tunnel than a proper room. At the end of the tunnel, Harry undid another set of traps before he pulled aside the thick hanging tarp painted to look like a stone wall (complete with fake portrait frames and other decorations tacked onto it with magic) to reveal a small, brightly lit, octagonal room. Set into each of the eight walls, were several open pipes; a few of them large enough to walk through while the rest of the pipes were of varying sizes (most barely large enough to fit someone's head inside).

Once the two wizards had joined him, Harry pulled the hanging tarp back into place and reset the traps protecting the entrance over the back of the tarp (so that they could be dismantled from the inside. Harry led the other two towards the smallest of the pipes (this one barely big enough to poke a finger in) next and glanced at the two men before he simply stepped through the wall; much as one would step through the barrier wall separating Platform Nine and Three Quarters from the rest of King's Cross Station (not that Harry was aware of that fact).

As soon as they were on the other side of the illusion, the two adults found themselves standing on a small platform connected to a spiral staircase that led down into the depths of the castle just as Harry stepped onto the first step. The moment both of his feet settled on the top step, the stairs began scrolling downwards like an escalator (just like the one leading up to the Headmaster's office, which is where Harry had gotten the idea from) only faster. Sirius and Remus both scrambled to join Harry on the shifting steps before the teen had disappeared out of sight as he spun ever downwards.

Just a few minutes later, the staircase dropped them off inside of a small tunnel that led directly into the Chamber of Secrets from behind Slytherin's statue; bypassing the large steel door that blocked off the main entrance entirely. Sirius then let out an impressed whistle as he stepped out of the tunnel and stared at the much changed Chamber of Secrets; Dobby and the young Tizzy had both been very busy over the past two and a half months.

The main chamber, which had originally been depressingly dark and gloomy, was now brightly lit with hundreds of magical oil lamps set in brackets twelve feet above the ground along both of sides of the room. Heavy ivory colored brocade drapes had been hung along the walls just below the lamps and helped brighten the room even more as the light reflected off of the pale fabric. Additionally, the new drapes significantly reduced the cold drafts that seeped into the room through the numerous pipes that led out of the room. The stone floor had been scrubbed clean, polished to a high shine, and partially covered with a large, thick, elf-made Acromantula silk rug that had been died a deep grass green.

The pool of near stagnant water at Slytherin's feet had been cleaned out, tiled with pale blue and white marble, enclosed in a two foot high wall to prevent the water from flooding the floor again, and converted into a pond that spanned the entire width of the chamber. Several magically hidden pipes carried fresh water to a number of locations (including the Black Lake) and help to further regulate the influx of water from the spring. A tasteful Japanese styled bridge made from teak and brass arched over the pond to allow one to easily move back and forth across the large pond.

An equally tasteful teak and brass spiral staircase allowed for easy access the former basilisk's nest inside of Slytherin's statue. The top landing of the staircase then wrapped around to the back of the statue's head so that the entrance to the various rooms that sat directly behind the statue's head could be easily accessed as well. Simple garden benches, chairs, and patio tables also made from teak and brass were tastefully scattered throughout the room.

The twin rows of rearing snake statues that had once lined the room had been removed and replaced with two long teak and brass planters that were five feet wide, eight feet deep (most of the depth sitting below floor level), and stretched from the pond to the wall with the original entrance. The planters were currently empty but would not be for long; Dobby had recently purchased several tons of potting soil, dragon-dung fertilizer, and a wide assortment of bulbs, saplings, and seeds that Neville had recommended for the indoor garden.

The soil and fertilizer would be poured into the planters once the sprinkler system was properly set up (which would be before the holidays were over). The elves wouldn't start planting until after Neville had returned in two and a half weeks though; the slightly pudgy third year had taken complete command of planning out the garden due to his vast knowledge of gardening and his experience in raising various magical plants.

Overall, the new décor gave one the impression that they'd just walked outside into an unfinished garden rather than an underground chamber.

Harry let his eyes take in the chamber as well for a moment but all he saw was a pale imitation of all that he had lost just over two years earlier. Turning away from the incomplete garden, Harry slipped through a door on the left hand wall into one of the many pipes leading out of the chamber.

Inside the stone tube, was a training room set up similar to a shooting gallery (similar to those found at carnival) using the snake statues from the main chamber as target holders; a room Dobby had set up for Harry's casting practice after Harry had become more destructive during his spell casting sessions. The walls of the room were lined with more lamps, the floor covered with polished teak panels, and a small brass and teak fence separated the first five feet of the room from the rest of the blocked off tunnel.

Harry drew his wand from his Inventory, stepped up to the fence, and cast a silent charm at the switch that would activate the targets at the far end of the tunnel. Once activated, wooden targets began randomly appearing in the mouths of the snake statues and Harry would try to blast the targets before they vanished. Each time he successfully destroyed a target, the speed at which the targets would appear and disappear would increase slightly and for every ten consecutive hits, the number of targets that appeared at the same time would increase by one.

A running total of his successful hits and the number of misses appeared on a charmed panel right beside the switch that controlled the target range.

He'd barely been casting for five minutes when the flow of targets vanished unexpectedly. Harry frowned at the statues as he lowered his wand; the teen more than a little confused as to why the targets had stopped without any warning. He then turned to glance at the control switch for the practice targets only to scowl when he found his godfather propped up against the wall beside the switch frowning at him.

"Save the fun stuff for later, short-stuff," Sirius stated with uncharacteristic seriousness despite the teasing nickname. "I want you to come on back out so that I can properly introduce you to Moony." Harry wiped the scowl from his face and stared impassively at his game assigned godfather; the teen completely unimpressed with the man's politely worded order. "Don't give me that look; it's the least you can do for me after I spent the last three months begging Moony to agree to teach you how to deal with the dementors. Not to mention the need for me to have to deal with the bloody demons myself just to get onto the school grounds so that I could spend the holidays here with you."

Harry's blank mask faltered at the mention of the monsters that had tormented him with all of his worst memories from his time in SAO. The possibility that he could learn to protect himself from the monsters something he knew he couldn't pass up because he never again wanted to experience the horror of his darkest memories again.

"Can he really teach me to destroy them?" Harry asked hoarsely; his voice rough from weeks of disuse (all of his spells in class had been cast silently to the shock of his professors). Silent spell casting was not taught until sixth year normally but Harry was just stubborn enough to force the issue; the teen completely unaware that silent casting was supposed to be difficult.

"No; the dementors can't be destroyed (at least not to my knowledge) but he can, however, try and teach you how to hold them off so that they can't draw upon your memories or incapacitate you."

"Oh."

"Come on; let's go find Moony before he wanders off to explore your underground paradise-in-progress and gets himself lost," Sirius instructed as he pushed away from the wall and headed back towards the main chamber.

Harry sighed and let his shoulders slump a bit as he hesitantly trailed after his virtual godfather; the thirteen year old torn between his need to learn how to fend off the dementors long enough to figure out how to destroy them and his desire for solitude. He buried his emotions a moment later as he stepped into the main chamber and let his eyes seek out the wizard that Sirius had brought with him. He soon spotted the man on the far side of the room inspecting the large round door that marked the former entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. The man must have excellent hearing as he spun around the moment Sirius set foot on the bridge over the pond and began making his way back in their direction.

"James, allow me to introduce you to Remus Lupin also known fondly to the pranking community as Moony. Moony my man, the moody little midget beside me is Mr. H. J. Potter better known as James unless you fancy being hexed in tender places or strung up in one of his fancy rope pranks."

Harry scowled as he kicked his virtual godfather in the ankle for the midget comment before he executed a polite bow and scratchily greeted, "Mr. Lupin."

"Ow, why'd you kick me?" Sirius whined as he hopped around on one foot while he held onto the foot that Harry had kicked.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you, James," Remus replied before he surprised Harry by returning his bow instead of offering his hand like most Englishmen would. "I must commend you on your expert handling of Padfoot's annoying tendency to tease, though I'd recommend using a rolled up newspaper next time; paper makes the lesson stick longer."

Harry snorted softly with amusement despite the depression he still felt as he dryly remarked, "I'll keep that in mind."

"Oy, what is this…? Gang up on Sirius day?"

"Yes," Harry and Remus both answered at the same time before glancing at each other in surprise.

"I'm doomed," Sirius deadpanned as he stopped hopping around and pouted at the two of them.

Harry laughed softly as he felt a small part of his grief melt away in light of his godfather's antics. He then remembered his manners and inquired, "Have the two of you eaten breakfast yet?"

"No, Moony rushed us out the door before dawn so we could get here right after the students left. Did you already grab food from the kitchen or are we going to have to trek back up to the castle?"

"Dobby will have made something the moment he sensed all three of us enter the Chamber."

"Who is Dobby?" Remus asked curiously as both of the older wizards followed Harry back towards the statue.

"Dobby is the House Elf that I tricked Lucius Malfoy into selling to me for a galleon after he lost a bet we made at the end of last year."

"You still have him? I thought you were going to set him free?"

"He refused to tell me how to free him," Harry groused half-heartedly as he climbed up the stairs that led to the top of Slytherin's statue. "I made a deal with him back in October; Dobby won't change my bed while I'm sleeping or wash my clothes while I'm wearing them and his duties now include taking care of Gaki, cooking any meals I don't eat in the Great Hall, and remodeling the Chamber of Secrets to make it livable."

"If you really want to free him, all you have to do is mumph," Sirius began only for his sentence to be cut off abruptly as the elf in question popped up in front of the wizard and sealed his mouth shut with one of the Weasley twin's Lip Traps.

"I suppose I should have warned you that Dobby won't allow anyone else to tell me how to free him either, ne?" Harry asked innocently as he glanced back at the stunned man as he tried to find his mouth. Dobby smirked at Sirius and bowed to Harry before he popped away again.

"Resourceful little guy," Remus commented as he smothered his laughter over Sirius's predicament. "How long will Sirius be without a mouth?"

"At least an hour: unless Dobby feels the need to repeat the lesson."

Remus laughed again as Harry led them into the small catacomb of rooms behind Slytherin's statue. The diminutive thirteen year old then gave the two men a tour of the hidden apartment in order to waste a bit of time until the Lip Trap wore off so that Sirius could eat. So far, Dobby had finished renovating the kitchen, the dining room, two guest rooms (one for Hermione and one for Neville), two bathrooms, a large study slash library, and Harry's bedroom. There were still rooms enough to make another six guest rooms, four more bathrooms, a living room, a couple of broom closets, a huge walk-in pantry (which Dobby had already started working on), an office, and at least two large storerooms.

That wasn't even counting the plans the elf had to make additional recreational rooms inside of the tunnels leading off of the main chamber based upon ideas devised by all three teens. Aside from the completed firing range, there would be an indoor Quidditch Pitch, an archery range, a dueling room, an indoor lap pool, an indoor sauna, an indoor hot spring slash Jacuzzi, a potions lab, an underground green house (for those plants that needed higher humidity), and a storage room for all of the gardening tools and supplies that would be needed to maintain the underground gardens.

It was an ambitious project for one lone elf (two if you counted Tizzy, since the female elf often worked alongside of Dobby). Dobby wasn't complaining though; the exuberant little elf was in seventh heaven now that he was up to his large, floppy ears in work.

Both of the older wizards were suitably impressed with the work that Dobby had done to make the Chamber of Secrets livable and what he still had yet to do. The two men peppered Harry with questions all through their meal; the two of them slowly but surely dragging Harry completely out of his grief riddled depression. After they finished eating, Sirius dragged Harry back down to the main chamber and had him run through the snitches and bludger spell casting practice. The man let him have a full ten minutes to get reacquainted with the drill before both men joined Harry on a couple of the extra brooms that Sirius had purchased and they both began lobbing spells and bludgers at the teen.

The grueling three hour training session that followed was exactly what Harry needed to burn a large portion of the negative emotions out of his heart as he dodged bludgers and spells while pegging the snitches with splashes of red paint. Lunch was eaten on the bridge over the pond as the trio recovered from the workout. Harry would then spend the rest of the afternoon listening to Remus explain the theory behind the Patronus Charm and attempting to cast the spell. He had trouble with the spell though due to the fact that he had trouble pulling up enough positive emotions to even form a silvery mist.

The rest of the winter holidays would be spent switching between the spell casting exercises, practicing the Patronus Charm, and working on his animagus training (the latter mostly involving meditation and self-reflection since Harry had not yet determined what animal best represented his inner nature). Both Sirius and Remus also spent quite a bit of time just working on getting Harry to laugh more often in the hopes that lightening his mood further would help his efforts to cast the Patronus Charm. Only two breaks were taken during those two and a half weeks.

The first break came on Christmas Day when Sirius and Remus actually snuck Harry out through the pipes and into the Forbidden Forest for the entire day in order to visit the centaurs and play in the snow. It would be the first time Harry ever visited the centaurs' village deep within the forest and he got to meet his first female centaurs and centaur foals (the two older wizards allowed to tag along because Firenze and Bane both vouched for Sirius after the summer and a half that he'd spent in the forest with Harry). When he learned that the dementors were causing problems for the herd and that they were considering moving higher up into the mountains with the rest of the creatures even though it would put the foals and yearlings at risk (due to the harsh winter weather), Harry immediately offered sanctuary to the herd.

Magorian, the leader of the herd, declined the offer right up until Harry described the underground garden his elf was building for him and the extensive network of wide tunnels that ran beneath both the castle and the forest. After a bit of haggling, it was agreed that the centaurs would take control of the outer tunnels and have access to the garden inside of the Chamber of Secrets in exchange for providing live saplings of assorted magical plants that grew in the forest (the centaurs had their pride, after all, and they were not keen on accepting charity from humans – not even one they liked).

Additionally, the offer of refuge was extended to all of the smaller and more benign magical creatures that couldn't protect themselves from the dementors (this list included several types of fairies, knarls, bowtruckles, a few nymphs and dryads, feral kneazles and kneazle mixes descended from abandoned or escaped pets, and an assortment of magical birds.

The second break came towards the end of the holiday when Sirius left the Chamber to speak with Dumbledore after the third or fourth time the headmaster requested an audience with the wizard. While Sirius was off meeting with the older man, Remus slipped out of the castle to purchase late Christmas presents on Harry's behalf (for Hermione, Neville, and the twins) as well as to stock up on chocolate. While both adults were gone, Harry made them each a dragon scale pendant like the one's he'd made for his fellow students back in his first year (Sirius's made from the smoky gray scales of the Shady Wyvern and shaped like a seated dog and Remus's a book made from the yellow scales of the Spark Dragon – since he didn't know the man all that well).

On the day that Remus and Sirius were due to leave (the same day the students were due back) the two Marauders openly left the castle before they snuck back into the castle using an old secret tunnel and Harry's invisibility cloak so that they wouldn't be spotted. The two wizards intended to spend the rest of the year in the castle in order to keep teaching Harry (and by extension Hermione and Neville, as well – once they returned to the castle) the Patronus Charm as well as a few other useful defensive spells.

Gifts would be exchanged when the students returned to the castle so that they could have a small Yule Feast together since all four of the students that hung out with Harry had gone home for the holidays this year. Harry received the usual boxes of assorted candies, a few books, and a brand new broom to replace the one that had been destroyed when the dementors drove him off it during the storm at the end of the first Quidditch match of the year. Fred and George would join the third year trio for their holiday feast.

While the two adults and five children feasted on Christmas favorites and exchanged gifts on the last day of the holiday, a lone second year dressed in Ravenclaw colors was accosted by a group of bullies in the hallways and the tarnished diadem that she'd found and desperately wanted to discard (because it frightened her) was taken by a fourth year student from her own house.

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**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Ne – used to solicit agreement or confirmation from the listener similar to using 'isn't it?' or 'right?' in English

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

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**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	21. Boggarts

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Twenty-One: Boggarts

_Friday, January 19, 2024 1:00 PM_

Most of the staff were pleased to see that Harry appeared far more relaxed when he reemerged from the Chamber of Secrets and acting far more human than he had been prior to the winder holidays. He still wouldn't talk to anyone when he was outside of the Chamber but he at least began interacting with others once more and gave silent or very short verbal responses when addressed by the staff. Down in the Chamber, out of sight of the rest of the students and staff, Harry was a completely different person as he trained with his fellow students, helped plant an assortment of shrubs, vines, flowers, and trees (most of them in the sapling stage) now that the planters had been filled with soil, and played tag with the young centaurs that visited the underground garden.

During the first two weeks of classes after the holidays, the entire school relaxed as the attack from Halloween night had long since faded from their memory because no one else had been attacked. Even the staff started behaving less vigilant as they assumed that the attacker had moved on (most everyone still firmly under the mistaken belief that the attacker had been Rookwood). Harry remained skeptical that an escaped Death Eater would go to the trouble of sneaking into the castle only to attack once but he kept his opinions to himself. That didn't stop him from utilizing his SAO Skills in between classes and when traveling through the castle whether or not he was alone (though, the latter rarely happened due to Hermione and Neville diligently sticking to his side).

The relative peace would be broken in the afternoon on January sixteenth during the third year's Defense Against the Dark Arts Class when this year's professor decided to introduce the class to a boggart.

Apparently, Professor John Dawlish (an auror on loan to the school from the Ministry and the individual responsible for keeping the dementors under control while they protected the grounds) didn't get the memo to use caution when it came to introducing fear inducing creatures to the third year class. Now, normally, introducing a boggart to a bunch of teens would be a harmless enough lesson that would also help them learn how to face their fears. Unfortunately, this year's third year class contained one H. James Potter and his fears were on a whole different level than most normal teenagers (and more than a few adults). One would think that the new Defense Professor would have realized that after witnessing the dementor attack on the Quidditch game first hand back in November.

The class started out fairly tame as Professor Dawlish introduced the lesson and taught all of the students the spell that was used to banish boggarts. For the first fifteen minutes, he had them practice the spell and think about the thing they feared the most and how to make that fear laughable. The man then made a critical mistake; he introduced a live boggart to the class and proceeded to force all of the students to face the creature. It would take him roughly eighteen minutes to realize his mistake and by then it would be far too late to prevent the entire third year class from being traumatized.

The first ten forms the boggart took were actually tame; a banshee that lost it's voice, a giant spider that lost all eight of its legs, a mummy that unraveled and tripped over its bandages, a severed hand caught in a rat trap, a large rat that chased its own tail, a snake that withered away, a single bloody eye that popped like a balloon, an angry white peacock that lost all its feathers, and a headless zombie that slipped on a banana peel. It was at that point that a reluctant Harry was pulled forward and pushed up in front of the boggart lying on the floor by the professor.

The first sign that there was something seriously wrong with Harry's boggart was the fact that it began swelling as the headless corpse turned into an unidentifiable mess of bones. The problem was that the creature the boggart was turning into continued to grow until it became patently obvious that it was not going to be able to fit inside of the classroom as sharp pointed legs (hundreds of them) crashed through several of the windows lining the outer wall to spill the back half of the creature's body down the side of the castle. As one, all thirty-seven of the remaining third years jerked backwards and stared up in horror as the terrifying creature with an alien-like face let out a high pitched shriek.

The students then screamed in sheer terror as the creature swung one of its large scythe-like forelimbs and destroyed the entire wall of windows. At the same time, the other scythe cut downwards and sliced through the stone floor; generating another set of screams as Professor's Flitwick's fifth year Charms Class (which was situated directly below the Defense Classroom) was interrupted by the deadly scythe that unexpectedly burst into their classroom. Pandemonium broke out as both classes fled their rooms in terror while screaming at the top of their lungs as the Skull Reaper, the creature that Harry's boggart had turned into, continued to destroy both rooms as it thrashed around in agitation.

Standing directly beneath the raging monster, Harry stood frozen in horror as he stared at the avatars that were shattering beneath the feet of the rampaging Boss Monster; his mind trapped in his memories of the day Aincrad fell. There was nothing amusing to be found in Harry's boggart and the simulated Skull Reaper would destroy the unused classrooms off to either side of the Defense Classroom and a good portion of the Charms Classroom below before Professor Dawlish had the foresight to return to the classroom to forcibly remove Harry from the vicinity of the monster that had brought one of his worst memories to life.

Getting the boggart to revert to something a little more tame after that was damn near impossible due to the sheer terror that the Skull Reaper had inspired in those who had seen it. Once Harry was out of the room and all of the students that had seen the creature were far enough away, the boggart reverted to a replica of Lord Voldemort during the height of his power as it faced Dawlish alone. While the professor was dealing with the boggart, Harry slid down the wall where he'd ended up after he'd been tossed from the classroom as tears of grief and frustration poured down his face after his losses from two years ago were once again thrown back in his face.

Classes were canceled for the rest of the day as the staff chased down the scattered third and fifth year students so that they could dose them with Calming Draughts in order to ease their panic and make sure that no one had been hurt. The rest of the students (those that had no clue as to what had happened) were herded into the Great Hall to keep them from getting in the way. Harry was delivered to the Great Hall by Dawlish shortly after the disheveled and highly irritated professor had finished dealing with the rampaging boggart.

The small handful of third years that were already in the hall screamed as soon as they caught sight of Harry; the tormented students associating him with their current fear because he was the one that had called the monster into being. Harry ignored them as he staggered over to the nearest corner (as far away from all of the other students as he could get) and curled up in on himself as his tears continued to fall. Whispers ran up and down the tables as those students closest to Harry noted that he was crying; a first as far as the majority of the students were aware.

Tales of horror soon competed with the gossip about Harry's current emotional breakdown as the third year Slytherins in the room began spreading the tale of what happened during their lesson. The only ones brave enough to approach Harry, once they were brought to the Great Hall, were Hermione, Neville, and the Weasley twins; though none of them dared ask him what that creature was once they saw the state the shorter wizard was in.

Order was restored to the Great Hall around five o'clock when the professors finally entered the room with the last of the scattered students. It took a good fifteen minutes to quiet down the students and get everyone (bar the five huddled in the corner) into their seats so that Dumbledore could make an announcement before supper was served. Harry ignored the adults in the room right up until Dumbledore actually began speaking.

"I would like to assure those individuals that witnessed the attack on the Defense and Charms Classrooms this afternoon that the creature that destroyed portions of the castle was not real," Dumbledore solemnly stated as he stood up in front of the staff table. "The creature you saw was nothing more than the figment of one child's imagination given life through a boggart and you have nothing to fear from the nightmarish creation aside from fear itself. The individual in question will be spoken with about his poor taste in pranks later this evening to make certain such an event does not occur again."

Harry's temper ignited as Dumbledore placed the blame for the entire thing squarely on his shoulders; going so far as to say he purposefully called forth such a monster just to torment and scare his fellow students. Unwilling to allow the man to paint him as some attention seeking child that enjoyed tormenting other people, Harry surged up out of the corner he'd hidden himself in and vaulted up onto the nearest table so that he could clearly see the headmaster over the sea of students seated in the Great Hall.

"Wrong!" Harry belted out as loud as he could; shocking most everyone present with the volume of his cry. "How dare you belittle my nightmares and try to turn one of my worst memories into a horrible joke! It took forty-seven people to defeat the Skull Reaper and fourteen of them died during the two days it took us to bring the monster down. Those people sacrificed their lives to destroy that monster so that everyone else could live. You defile their sacrifice with your insistence that they were nothing but a figment of my imagination! The Skull Reaper existed just as surely as you insist that you exist!"

"Mr. Potter, now is not the time to spread lies…"

"I'm not lying! I have not once lied to _anyone_ since you forced me into this world against my will!"

"Mr. Potter, that creature you dreamed up does not exist…"

"You are wrong and I can prove it."

"Surely you don't expect me to believe that you've actually encountered such a terrible creature…"

Harry snarled wordlessly at the bearded wizard before he opened up his menu and scrolled through his SAO Inventory to the four items he'd received on the day Aincrad fell. The moment he found the item he was looking for, he pulled it from his Inventory and a chorus of terrified screams rang out as all twenty feet of the Reaper's Stinger appeared in the air beside Harry before it crashed down onto the table beneath his feet so that the blood crusted point hovered just inches away from Dumbledore. The students seated at the table that Harry was standing on and the one directly beside it had scattered the moment the stinger had appeared and most of them barely got out of the way of the huge section of bone as it crashed down onto both tables.

"That is the Skull Reaper's stinger from the tip of his tail. The blood you see on the tip is _my_ blood," Harry proclaimed hotly as he used his menu to remove both his robes and his shirt to bare his torso so that he could point to the two inch circular scar that marred his chest just below his right collar bone (the corresponding scar on his back closer to three inches in diameter). "The Skull Reaper impaled me with its stinger through the back. Are you going to tell me that my scar, my blood, and the stinger are all figments of my imagination? Can you still claim that I made up the monster that appeared today when the proof it existed is sitting right beneath your crooked nose!? To deny that the Skull Reaper existed is to deny that you yourself exist. _That is __**my **__reality._"

A pin drop could have been heard in the silence that followed Harry's impassioned counter speech as Madam Pomfrey scanned the tip of the bone stinger draped across two of the house tables. The students were shifting their gazes between Dumbledore, Harry, and the giant bone as they tried to comprehend exactly what was happening; all of them caught up in the drama unfolding in front of them as they were given a first hand accounting of one small mystery surrounding the Boy-Who-Lived and they didn't want to miss a single second.

"The bone spike and the blood coating it are both real," Madam Pomfrey declared into the silence once her wand fell still. "The tip of the bone spike is the correct size and shape to have made the injury that caused the scars on Mr. Potter's right shoulder, front and back; an injury that I personally healed, as difficult as it was, two years ago. There is also no question that the dried blood on the bone's tip is Mr. Potter's and that it is over two years old."

The entire hall burst into mutters after that proclamation and Harry glared at Dumbledore for another minute before he knelt down to return the Reaper's Stinger back to his Inventory least someone try to take it from him. He then redressed himself before he dropped down from the table and stalked out of the room without looking back; he needed to get away from the others. His four near constant companions scampered out after him a minute later and caught up to him just as he reached the new entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Harry glanced at them but said nothing as he undid the traps and climbed down into the darkened room below (leaving Dobby to reset the traps once the others entered the passageway).

Harry would spend the rest of the night setting an all new record on the Firing Range while Hermione, Neville, Fred, and George filled Sirius and Remus in on everything that had happened that afternoon.

* * *

_Friday, January 19, 2024 10:15 PM_

Albus sighed as he seated himself at the head of the staff table while he waited for the four Heads of House, the school matron, and his temporary Defense Professor to join him. A house elf popped in to deliver his pensieve a moment later and Albus absently thanked the creature as he began drawing out the memories that were inside of the basin and placed in conjured vials so that the device could be used for the coming meeting. He'd just slipped the final memory to a vial when the six people he was waiting for filed into the conference room.

"All of the students, bar the five Gryffindors that walked out of the Great Hall just before supper, are safely tucked into their common rooms for the evening and the wards set to alert us should any of them attempt to sneak out," Minerva stated briskly as she gracefully sat down in the chair beside Albus.

"Those five are undoubtedly breaking the rules again by being out of bounds after curfew; no doubt hiding beneath the school in the Chamber of Secrets," Severus silkily and sulkily pointed out. "As annoying as it is that their little group keeps flouting the rules; I'm far more concerned with the letters that are winging their way home as we speak. Letters that are carrying the word about the monstrosity that was unleashed upon the school this afternoon. A disaster that could have been avoided entirely if some_one_ had used a bit of common sense when setting up his lesson plans."

"Don't blame me for what that brat did; you know as well as I do that the boggart takes the fear that is at the forefront of a person's mind. If you ask me, the little brat purposefully thought up the most frightening thing that he could imagine in order to cause trouble," Dawlish countered as he scowled at the dour potion master.

"There is no point in pointing fingers at this point," Dumbledore interjected before Severus could make a retort. "John, if you could provide your memory of the entire lesson; I'd like to see the creature that the boggart turned into. Filius, I would appreciate a copy of the memory of your disrupted lesson as well."

Once the two memories in question had been added to the pensieve, all seven adults stuck a finger in the swirling liquid so that they could all view the memories. They landed in the Defense Classroom as John stepped through the door and watched the short lecture play out. Albus walked up beside Mr. Potter after a few minutes and read what the pint sized wizard had been writing down on his parchment.

He was a bit surprised to find that the stunted wizard was actually writing his notes in a combination of kanji and romaji that very few individuals within the castle could have translated. The teen was also somehow recording the lecture at the same time according the small flashing icon with the kanji for record on it that was hovering in the air beside the small wizard was any indication. Before he could get a closer look at the memory of the magic involved, the lecture ended and all of the students put everything but their wands away. The children then climbed to their feet and moved to one side as John used his wand to clear the desks out of his way for the practical lesson.

Knowing that the incident would be playing out soon, Albus followed Mr. Potter as John brought out the trunk holding the boggart. Once the boggart had been unleashed on the class and the students began facing their fears one by one, Albus noted that Mr. Potter and his two companions had purposefully hung back as if to avoid going anywhere near the boggart (the taller two obviously only holding back because of Mr. Potter's reluctance to move forward). It wasn't until John literally pulled the recalcitrant child forward that Mr. Potter faced the shape shifting creature.

Albus nearly had a heart attack as he watched the boggart swell into the nightmare creation that Mr. Potter had called a Skull Reaper. The thing was impossibly huge and deadlier than he'd originally believed it to be. He wasn't the only one to jump in fright when the monstrosity let out a shriek as it destroyed the windows and wall before slicing through the floor. Despite the fear the memory inspired, Albus couldn't help but note that Mr. Potter was not actually looking at the deadly creature that was literally looming over his head while it destroyed the classroom around him.

Mr. Potter's eyes remained firmly glued to the same five strangely dressed people that were shattering repeatedly as the legs of the creature crushed them each time it moved.

The most disturbing thing Albus noted though, was the fact that Mr. Potter never once moved from the spot that John had pushed him into to face the boggart. The diminutive teen simply stood beneath the raging monster and waited for death to claim him. The look of utmost horror on the child's face spoke volumes, as did the tears that poured unheeded down the child's face.

Albus felt as if he'd aged another hundred years by the time John had forcefully removed Mr. Potter from the classroom in order to try and bring what should have been a fairly harmless boggart (for the creatures were usually fairly easy to defeat) back under control. The memory ended just a few minutes later after John had contained the boggart; cutting off abruptly as the man began hauling Mr. Potter off towards the Great Hall.

The memory shifted and soon the seven of them were standing inside of Filius's classroom as the diminutive Charms Professor monitored the students as they practiced casting Silencing Charms. Filius was just admonishing Fred and George to stop silencing their classmates and cast the spell on their raven when the room shook as something slammed into the wall outside of the classroom just seconds before the Skull Reaper's scythe cut through the ceiling as if it was made of butter and impaled the Weasley twin's raven to the desk and pinned one of the twin's robes to the floor as both twins threw themselves in opposite directions while the rest of the class screamed.

To their credit, the redheaded twins didn't panic over how close to death they'd just come as the trapped twin was freed with a quick cutting curse before the scythe was pulled through the ceiling and disappeared back from where it had come from. The two boys then cast shielding charms to protect their classmates as large pieces of the ceiling began tumbling all around them as the room above them was destroyed. Filius had urged everyone to evacuate the room as quickly as possible while he banished and vanished the handful of large stones that were dislodged from the ceiling and attempted to cripple the unseen creature that had attacked the room in order to buy the children time to escape.

The memory ended some ten minutes later when the boggart had been neutralized by John and the seven adults were returned to the staff room. Albus made a copy of both memories and sealed them into crystal vials before the two men reclaimed their memories from the pensieve. He then drew his memory of the most recent confrontation with Mr. Potter in the Great Hall and deposited it in the basin before the group dove back into the pensieve a second time. Once again, Albus moved to stand next to the emotionally volatile child as the young teen unhesitatingly argued with him in front of the entire school.

The child's heated words, laced with hate, anger, and grief as they were, pierced Albus's heart just as deeply as they had the first time he heard them.

When they were returned to the staff room at the end of that memory, Albus wearily sat down and buried his face in his hands. If any one dared asked him, Albus would be hard pressed to pinpoint the exact moment when all of his carefully laid plans had begun to unravel around him. He would be tempted to say that it was the day he left young Harry on the doorstep of his aunt's home and place most of the blame on the Dursleys for whatever it was they'd done to the child but he suspected that he'd made a tiny but critical mistake far earlier than that. He collected himself a moment later and glanced up to gauge the current mood of his staff.

He could see Minerva was torn between anger (no doubt at him for his many mistakes in dealing with the young Potter heir and at Dawlish for forcing Mr. Potter to face the boggart) and pained grief (over the obvious suffering that her little lion had been experiencing since his first encounter with a dementor during the summer). Severus was far harder to read but Albus knew the young man was upset; though whether it was at himself for failing to protect Lily's son as promised or at Albus for not protecting the child he could not say. Filius was obviously upset was well, the normally cheerful man scowling at the table with his arms crossed defensively across his chest.

Pomona appeared unruffled but Albus knew she was just as upset as Minerva was because of the way she was tapping her wand against her thigh. Poppy was far too wrapped up in analyzing the information she'd gathered from the short period of time she'd examined the bone stinger to give into the anger and grief he suspected she was feeling. The strict healer had been troubled greatly by the injuries that had appeared when Mr. Potter's soul had returned to his body and she'd spent her free time over the last two and a half years trying to solve the mystery from the little clues she picked up here and there.

That was the reason why she had been far more interested in the bone spike than she was in Harry's emotional distress at the moment (though that would bother her too once she was no longer in research mode).

Then there was John Dawlish; an auror, not a teacher. Out of all the aurors in the department that could have been sent, the Minister had seen fit to send the one with the least amount of people skills. Even Alastor would have been preferable to have teaching the children, despite his extreme paranoia, and that was saying something. Alastor never would have shoved Mr. Potter forward to face the boggart after the way he'd reacted to the dementor attack the previous month. As gruff as his old friend could be, Alastor had a knack for knowing when a person was close to breaking and Mr. Potter had shown clear signs of being highly uncomfortable over being forced to face the physical manifestation of his fears.

And the man was angry but Albus got the impression that the man was angry at Mr. Potter and not on Mr. Potter's behalf like the others.

Pushing away his dislike for one of the Minister's personal lapdogs, Albus addressed the group once more, "I believe it would be in our best interest to give the child the space he desires for the time being while keeping a discreet eye on him from a distance. I fear pushing him while he is in such a fragile state will only make matters worse and drive him further away. Any issues that crop up can be funneled through Minerva; as she is his Head of House."

"So you intend to encourage him, cater to his every whim, and fuel his delusions?" John demanded with a sneer.

"Giving the child time and space to cope with the dark memories that you callously stirred up after the traumatic attack that he'd suffered two months ago by the dementors, dementors that _you_ are responsible for keeping in line, is hardly catering to the child's every whim," Minerva fired back as she bristled over the insult to her littlest (and fiercest) lion.

"Only a fool provokes an angry dragon," Severus sagely interjected with a superior sneer that was directed at John; the dour man surprisingly not blaming everything on James Potter's son like he would have prior to the day Mr. Potter had been found buried beneath a thick layer of dust in a concealed cupboard. "The child throws around his magic like a graphorn on the rampage when the right, or wrong, buttons are pushed and I, for one, would much prefer not to wind up on the business end of his wand should he be pushed too far. His current emotional state is comparable to an unstable potion and it won't take much to make him explode at this point."

"I would suggest that you take your own words to heart, Albus," Filius warned as he climbed to his feet. "Based upon the interactions the two of you have had over the past thirty months, Mr. Potter blames you for his current situation. That you are his legal guardian only clouds the issue and, while I know it was not your intention, you keeping him locked up here at the school for his safety is no different than you locking him in a prison in his mind. It doesn't help that you took away the one thing that allowed him to burn off his frustration with your agreement to house the dementors around the school this year; his weekly outings into the Forbidden Forest."

Nothing more was said as all six of the others filed out of the room; Minerva and John glaring at each other as they left. Albus sighed as he poured the memories he'd pulled from the pensieve earlier back into the basin and called for an elf to return his pensieve to his office before he too left the staff room to wander through the halls of his school searching for answers. As he patrolled the corridors, the old wizard reflected upon his confrontations with the young Potter over the course of the past two and a half years.

Far below the aged wizard, Harry continued to blast targets apart in a desperate attempt to escape his memories; tears coursing down his face once more as the pain of being separated from Agil, Klein, and Lisbeth and not even knowing if they were even still alive seared his soul at the same time as he grieved yet again for the deaths of Kirito and Asuna.

* * *

**AN:** _For those who wish to cry foul because Snape in Drag didn't make an appearance in this chapter, please keep in mind that it was Remus who encouraged Neville to dress the sourpuss up in Madam Longbottom's robes, hat, and purse and Mr. Moony is not the professor this year around because Dumbledore didn't need his expertise to protect the castle from an escaped Sirius. Neville also didn't face the boggart this time around while Harry did. I'm not certain if I would have had Neville's boggart the same or if I'd have him see Harry dead because of the scare earlier in the year when he thought he'd killed Harry because he punched him. _

_So, anywho, that's why there was no Snape in Drag in this chapter. _

_And before anyone starts complaining that I am purposefully tormenting Harry. I'm not. Boggarts were covered in PoA on their first Defense lesson w/ Remus. All I did was to change the date they studied the dementors, change what Harry's boggart turned into, and have him being pulled up to face the boggart during class because Dawlish isn't as sensitive of Harry's (or the rest of the class's) feelings. There's also the fact that I tormented two full classes right alongside of Harry; so he at least wasn't suffering alone this time. ~ Jenn_

**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	22. Royalty

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Two: Royalty

_Friday, May 31, 2024 01:23 PM_

Harry scowled as he was kicked out of the Defense Classroom; the class was reviewing dark creatures this afternoon and Professor Dawlish had brought in another Boggart. In order to prevent a re-occurrence of the disaster that their first lesson on Boggarts had turned into, Dawlish had ordered Harry to stand out in the corridor outside of the room so there would be no chance of the Boggart encountering the four foot wizard. Harry didn't really mind being excused from the practical lesson; he had no desire to see the Skull Reaper repeatedly kill his friends yet again. He did, on the other hand, mind the way Professor Dawlish had again insinuated that Harry would intentionally call the Skull Reaper into being.

In order to pass the time while he waited to be allowed back into the classroom, Harry reflected on everything that had happened over the course of the past four months.

After the public confrontation with Dumbledore over the existence of the Skull Reaper, all of the staff had stepped back and truly gave Harry room to breathe for the first since he'd woken up in the world of MaM whereas before they'd always sought to see how he was adjusting or tried to get him to recognize MaM as reality. That space allowed Harry to bury his renewed grief since no one was forcing him to 'deal' with it. Being able to take his frustration out in his private training grounds beneath the castle and having his godfather and Remus around to continue their brutal spell casting slash evasion training sessions certainly helped as well.

Once he'd managed to bury all of the negative emotions around the second weekend of February, Harry had finally been able to produce a silvery white mist during the Patronus lessons that Remus had continued to give him and the others. It probably wouldn't do much good against a dementor but it was at least progress. When Hermione asked him how he'd managed it, Harry told her that he'd been thinking of the day he'd made his first ever friend. Two weeks later, his Patronus would take the form of a huge misty bear using his memory of his first Christmas with Agil (celebrated three days late) when he'd made his second ever friend and exchanged gifts for the first time ever.

The next day he played in his second match of the year when Gryffindor faced the Hufflepuff team and Harry had felt ill during the entire day as he feared being attacked by the dementors again. He still managed to catch the snitch before the other seeker had found it though and once the game was over he felt nothing but relief knowing that the dementors had not shown up again. The thirteen year old had then spent the entire evening sulking in the Gryffindor Common Room while the rest of the house partied late into the night; the twins had refused to let him sneak off back to the Chamber.

First thing the next morning, Harry had returned to his sanctuary with Hermione and Neville in tow (he'd left the twins behind on purpose). Later that afternoon, he had produced a fully formed bear patronus using the memory of the day he first began to see Agil as a father figure. The silvery-white bear towered over Harry as it stood beside him on its hind feet; the bear well over four times Harry's height. Aside from the unnatural height of the bear, the magically generated creature wore an exact replica of Agil's SAO outfit including an oversized replica of Agil's favorite two-handed double-bladed axe. Remus's wolf patronus looked rather puny standing near the towering giant of a bear.

Harry's good mood in the wake of his accomplishment stayed with him through most of March as Remus slowly began testing him by having him cast it in the presence of a dementor. That was accomplished by Remus capturing and imprisoning one of the foul demons in one of the unused tunnels that ran beneath the lake (well away from the main chamber and the tunnels that had been converted into rooms or claimed by the centaurs). Remus would then bring Harry just close enough to the dementor for him to feel its presence and had him work on casting the patronus.

Each time he successfully cast the spell, Remus would move him a few steps closer to the caged dementor so that the effects of the dementor would be increased in small increments in order to help him master the spell. Once they got close enough for Harry to actually see the demon and at the point where his memories were being drawn forward, Remus adjusted the training sessions and had Harry cast the spell the moment he first felt the chill that indicated a dementor was nearby and had him walk forward using the bear as a shield until he either stood right beside the cage or his bear vanished under the onslaught of the dementor's power.

It was grueling training, far more so than the spell casting and dodging practice with his godfather, but Harry faced each session with sheer determination in order to work out a way to destroy the terrible demons. He even did extra research in the library between classes in order to learn more about any weaknesses that the dementors might have; such as their aversion to positive emotions and sunlight.

He would go on to kill his first dementor on the twenty-second of March.

Harry had just entered the Chamber with his four companions in tow when a young centaur had dashed up to him to relay the news that a dementor had chased a young girl into the Forbidden Forest as the sun set. Harry hadn't thought twice about accepting the quest he'd just been presented and he immediately followed the centaur into the tunnels so that the centaur could lead him as close to the girl as possible. As they drew near to one of the many exits leading up into the forest, Harry drew his wand and called forth his patronus so that he'd have protection as he stepped foot beneath the still bare limbs of the trees.

The small gathering of centaurs that had been nervously standing near the tunnel exit were quick to point Harry in the direction they'd last seen the girl and her pursuer heading. As he took off after the student, Harry sent Hedwig up into the sky to pinpoint the student's location. It only took the highly intelligent occamy two minutes to find the wayward student and her attacker; Hedwig's eyes far better at seeing in the dark than Harry's despite his use of his mastered Night Vision Skill.

Sprinting forward, Harry did his best not to outpace his patronus as Hedwig led him right to the girl. They found both student and dementor in the center of a small clearing deep within the woods. Harry's bear patronus darted forward on all four feet when they saw the girl collapse in exhaustion as the dementor drew closer to her. The bear drew to a halt just a few feet away from the pair and rose up onto its hind legs as it pulled the axe from its back and used the ghostly weapon to push the dementor away from its victim. Harry had then used his SAO magic to call the shadows out of the clearing and bathed the dementor in bright moonlight that was being enhanced by his ability to control the elements.

The dementor screamed and writhed as the light became near blinding while the elemental spell held the creature hostage and the positive emotions radiating from the bear burned it. Seeing the creature in pain, Harry used his wand to light the dementor's cloak on fire before he used his SAO magic to turn the flames into a searing hot fire that turned the dementor into ash in an instant. The ash statue shattered just seconds later and Harry allowed all three elemental spells he'd used to fade away as he hesitantly approached the unconscious girl lying in the middle of the clearing; her pale hair glittering like moonlight.

That was how Harry had met Luna Lovegood.

Well, technically, he hadn't actually met her until a few days later because he'd delivered her to the Hospital Wing while she was still unconscious from her desperate flight through the forest and the effects of the dementor that had tried to steal her soul from her. She'd be introduced to Sirius, Remus, Hermione, Neville, and the twins a week after the attack when Harry brought her down to the Chamber of Secrets after he had learned that bullies had chased her out of the castle the previous weekend from one of the school ghosts.

Hermione took the petit second year under wing as the only other girl in their small circle; the two girls had quickly become fast friends despite their differences (the mutual suffering at the hands of bullies and near death experiences at the hands of a magical creature forging a bond between them). It helped that Luna had lost most of her 'loony' demeanor after being traumatized by the dementor attack (her 'looniness' one of the reasons she'd been bullied) and rarely ever mentioned any of the imaginary creatures that she used to speak about all of the time. The changes Hermione had undergone since she first started attending Hogwarts were also a large factor in the ease with which Hermione accepted the younger girl.

The month of April had been terrible.

A total of eleven witches were attacked over the course of the month by what was believed to be the same person that had attacked the sixth year Hufflepuff on Halloween night; attacks that were thought to be the work of the still at large Augustus Rookwood. Once again all extracurricular activities had been canceled and the students were escorted through the halls between classes. A small squad of aurors was assigned to patrol the halls of the castle day and night at the end of the month after three fourth year witches, a fifth year witch, and a sixth year witch from both Gryffindor and Hufflepuff (the three fourth years the youngest victims yet) were attacked inside of the girl's bathroom on the first floor during lunch (the fifth year a Hufflepuff prefect that had escorted the other girls to the bathroom).

Harry was the only person in the castle that believed the recent attacks had been done by a completely different person than the attack on the sixth year back on Halloween. To start with, the first target had been male while all eleven of the other victims had all been witches. All eleven of the witches had been beautiful, talented, and intelligent muggleborns and halfbloods from all four houses and the only thing the first victim had in common with any of them was the fact that he'd been a muggleborn. The witches that were attacked had also been cruelly disfigured with dark spells after they had been tortured (all of them left with terrible scars) while the first victim had just been tortured.

There had been no chance for Harry to investigate the crime scenes or hunt down the newest attacker due to the staff keeping an extra close eye on him during the entire month (in an effort to keep him out of trouble) and after the aurors turned up at the castle the attacks stopped completely once more. After most of May passed without an attack, the staff allowed the Quidditch teams to play a pair of games on the fourth weekend of the month; Gryffindor facing Ravenclaw on the twenty-fifth and Slytherin facing Hufflepuff on the twenty-six with Gryffindor and Hufflepuff both winning their respective games.

Harry had taken his growing frustrations over his inability to stop the attacks before the aurors had shown up out on the dementors as he purposefully snuck out into the forest each night and targeted the solitary demons he tracked down in order to improve upon the combination of spells he'd used to destroy that first dementor.

That brought Harry right up to the present. The security of the castle had been further relaxed just the night before when the aurors that had been patrolling the castle had been recalled to follow up on a muggle sighting of Rookwood in southern England; most everyone believed that the escaped Death Eater (who they still blamed for all of the attacks) had fled south shortly after the arrival of the aurors at the castle.

Harry was forcefully pulled from his reflections when a loud crash sounded from somewhere above him. Knowing that there weren't any occupied classrooms on the wing directly above the new Defense Classroom, hoping to kill a bit of time before he grew bored just standing in the hall, and suspecting that he wouldn't be missed for at least another twenty minutes, Harry dashed off towards the stairs to investigate. It only took him three minutes to reach the corridor directly above the one he'd been standing in (thanks to Sprint) and he skidded to a halt when he found a bloodied and disfigured witch in Ravenclaw colors unconscious on the floor amidst a pile of armor.

He cautiously crept closer to the downed witch and his eyebrows rose in surprise when he recognized her as the fourth year Ravenclaw seeker; Cho Chang.

He'd just barely knelt down to pick her up in order to Teleport her to the Hospital Wing so that her injuries could be treated when he heard someone whisper the word '_Crucio_' from somewhere behind him just seconds before his entire body erupted with pain as the yellow light of the Unforgivable Curse and the taint of dark magic washed over him and Hedwig. Hedwig gave off a pained screech as she peeled herself from Harry's shoulders to escape the pain while Harry arched backwards and let out a scream. Harry felt as if he could feel himself shattering beneath the sheer agony the curse produced; the pain sharply reminding him of the day he'd glitched out at level thirty.

He was then hit with a long chain of pain inducing spells, including several more Crucios, one right after another and the constant rain of spellfire prevented him from protecting himself or attacking in return while the vile feeling of dark magic swimming over him soon had his stomach cramping painfully. The barrage of spells ended roughly ten minutes later when Hedwig finally recovered enough to attack his assailant; though the pain that had been caused by the attack lingered on. Harry panted as he sat up (his entire body on fire from the attack) and spun around on his knees to get his first look at his attacker.

She was a somewhat pretty but mostly plain witch with curly reddish-blonde hair from Ravenclaw. Harry had no idea what her name was but he knew that she was Cho's friend as he'd often seen her hanging out with Cho both before and after each Quidditch Game over the past two years. The most notable thing about the girl was the ugly tarnished crown perched upon her head.

A crown that gave off the same aura of dark magic that Harry had encountered on the Soul Container he'd defeated down in the Chamber of Secrets about a year ago.

Harry automatically assumed that the crown was another Soul Receptacle and that the girl was being either possessed or controlled by Voldemort since he'd faced the shade during both of his first two years. That his assumptions would be proven true before his current ordeal was over would only reinforce his belief that he was trapped in another game. The only inconsistency in the Boss Fight scenario this time was the fact that he hadn't been required to locate a hidden Dungeon in order to confront the Boss. He also hadn't needed to fight any high powered monster before facing the Boss but he supposed the dementors could be counted as this year's high level monster(s).

Inspection of his opponent complete, Harry quickly withdrew his shield from his Inventory along with his wand while the most recent incarnation of the Dark Lord (that Harry soon designated as Queen Voldemort in his mind) was still preoccupied with his familiar. Once he was prepared for the fight, Harry let out a sharp whistle to call Hedwig off so that she would not be hurt again. The unnamed witch then spun and lashed out at Harry with the same curse she'd hit him with earlier and Harry blocked it with his shield as he counterattacked with one of the less harmful spell chains that Sirius had taught him; he knew that he couldn't hurt the witch.

The fight barely lasted a full fifteen minutes before Harry disarmed, stunned, and secured her with magical ropes the moment he'd worked himself close enough that she couldn't dodge or block his spells. Still, it had been an intense battle and Harry sported more than a few bruises and several long gashes on his face, right arm, right side, and right leg from where he'd been clipped by the dark cutting curses that the witch had used. He'd been far more concerned with deflecting and dodging the two Unforgivable Curses that she'd been throwing out left and right to worry about the other spells for the most part. It didn't help that the speed of his reactions had been hampered from the torture he'd endured.

The thing that bothered Harry, however, was the fact that when compared to the first two versions of Voldemort that he had faced, Queen Voldemort had been a weakling when she should have been stronger this time based upon the usual game logic.

Battle over, Harry approached the downed witch and leaned down to remove the gaudy crown from her head with his bloodied right hand just as Dumbledore charged around the corner with his wand in hand and Professors McGonagall, Snape, Flitwick, and Dawlish on his heels. All five adults stumbled to a stop and stared in shock and concern as Harry's hand touched the tarnished crown. The moment his blood came into contact with the metal ornament, an explosion of inky smoke burst out of the thing and screamed as it formed a familiar face before it shattered into pieces; signifying that Harry had once again defeated the shade.

"I wonder if that counts as completing this year's test or not," Harry mused out loud as the crown vanished from his hand and a battle summary appeared in front of him. He calmly closed out the summary and returned his battered shield to his Inventory before he addressed the still gaping adults, "Someone else will need to take both witches to the Hospital Wing this time; I'm too tired to use magic and I can't carry both of them. I would have taken Chang myself when I first found her but Queen Voldemort attacked me when I wasn't paying attention."

At his words, Professor Flitwick rushed forward to deal with the gravely injured Cho Chang who was thankfully still alive despite the extra half an hour she'd spent bleeding out on the floor while Harry had been tortured and during the time it had taken for him to deal with the one responsible for her condition. Harry watched the short man (who was still a good seven inches taller than Harry) place the girl on a stretcher and rushed her off to the Infirmary before he returned his attention to the four adults still standing in the corridor with him. His attention was then drawn to his familiar as she returned from wherever she'd been hiding during the short battle and latched onto his chest as she crooned a soft lament while nuzzling the bleeding cut that ran along the right side of his jaw.

"You should have still been in class, Mr. Potter; so how is it that you managed to place yourself in harm's way yet again?" Dumbledore inquired after a brief moment where he seemed to struggle with his curiosity and his need to admonish the teen.

"Professor Dawlish kicked me out of the room when he began reviewing Boggarts with the rest of the class. I stayed in the hall outside the Defense Classroom until I heard a crash. Since I had time to kill before I would be allowed to return to class, I came to see what happened, found Change lying amidst the broken armor, and was attacked from behind when I attempted to take her to the Hospital Wing. I honestly had not thought I'd face this year's Boss so soon or in such an open place since I had not defeated the demons littering the castle grounds or I would have been more cautious."

"You can finish questioning Mr. Potter later, Albus," Professor McGonagall interjected when the bearded wizard opened his mouth the moment Harry finished giving his explanation. "Right now is not the time; in case you didn't notice, he's bleeding all over the floor. Come, child, I will escort you to the Infirmary myself to insure that you make it there in one piece without taking any detours on the way."

"_Mendoukusei_," Harry complained in Japanese as Professor McGonagall imperiously gestured for him to lead the way while Snape placed the bound girl on a stretcher and levitated her before he fell into step beside the two of them as they headed for the Hospital Wing; leaving Dumbledore and Professor Dawlish to deal with the messes from the short battle.

Their small group ran into a worried Hermione, Neville, Fred, and George halfway there and their relief over finding Harry soon turned into concern when they noted his current condition; his clothes torn and bloodied and him still bleeding from multiple injuries. Hermione had tears in her eyes as she stared at him with her hands pressed over her mouth as she took in his still weeping injuries.

Harry actually gave the older teen a small crooked smile as he quipped, "Don't worry, Hermione, I won't shatter any time soon; I just picked up a few cuts and bruises."

"Why are you shaking then?" Neville asked with a frown as he took in the tiny muscle spasms racking Harry's entire body; something that Harry hadn't even noticed until the other boy had pointed it out.

"Huh, so I am," Harry mused as he stared at his trembling hands. "I suppose I didn't notice that sooner because my nerves are still on fire from the small bout of torture I endured when I was ambushed from behind. That reminds me, Professor McGonagall, do you know if the cure for the Cruciatus Curse is safe for occamies to consume? Hedwig took the brunt of the first curse I was hit with because she was still sitting on my shoulders when I was attacked from behind."

"You… you were… tor… tortured with the Cru…Cruciatus Cur…Curse?" Neville stuttered out as his eyes went really wide.

"Yes in addition to several others."

Both Professor McGonagall and Snape went pale the moment Harry replied; they'd not once thought to ask him about any of the spells he'd been hit with in the face of his more obvious injuries. Professor Snape was the first one to recover and he pinned Harry with a stern gaze as he asked, "How many times did your assailant cast the Cruciatus Curse on you and how long you were held under the spell each time? Do you know what other spells were used on you?"

"I wasn't really counting the number or types of spells I was hit with during the time it took for Hedwig to recover from the one time she was hit. It was also a little difficult to think through the pain. As for how long I was tortured, that was roughly ten minutes and I only know that because I'd glanced at my player clock the moment I found Chang and again after Hedwig came to my defense."

"Do you know what happened to your assailant's wand?"

Harry wordlessly handed the wand over to Professor Snape in response to that question; the pint sized teen had pocketed the wand the moment he'd taken it from his attacker in order to prevent Queen Voldemort from getting her hands on it again.

"Shouldn't we be getting James to the Hospital Wing?" Hermione demanded when it looked as if both adults had already forgotten about Harry's current state of less than perfect health.

Professor McGonagall actually cursed under her breath before she promptly conjured another stretcher and used her wand to pick Harry up and settle him onto the stretcher. Harry yelped indignantly and would have jumped off of the stretcher if not for the ropes that sprang out of his Head of House's wand to secure him in place. He soundly cursed the witch out (under his breath and in Japanese so she couldn't understand exactly what he was saying) the rest of the way to the Infirmary. Professor McGonagall probably would have given him a month's worth of detentions (regardless of whether or not she could understand his words) if he hadn't been injured and suffering nerve damage.

They arrived at the Hospital Wing just a few minutes later to find Madam Pomfrey still working to heal Cho Chang. The four students that had tagged along with the group out of concern for Harry's condition were promptly chased out of the ward with stinging hexes from the irate healer, though they didn't go far. Harry would have loved to have fled with them.

"Set both of them down on a bed and tell me what's wrong with Mr. Potter this time, Minerva," Madam Pomfrey demanded as she returned her attention to the young lady she was currently healing. "And is the other young lady in the same state as this one here?"

"Mr. Potter was tortured for roughly ten minutes straight before his familiar intervened and allowed him to turn the tables on his attacker; Severus is checking Miss Edgecombe's wand now to determine what curses she used on him though he was hit multiple times with the Cruciatus. Miss Edgecombe is merely stunned."

"Miss Edgecombe has been the one attacking the students this year?" Madam Pomfrey asked in shock as she whipped around to gawk at Professor McGonagall.

"No, Queen Voldemort was the one that attacked all those girls last month as well as Chang this afternoon," Harry interjected as he sat up the moment he was freed from the ropes and transferred onto the bed. "I don't rightly know who the shade was possessing when he attacked that sixth year Hufflepuff back on Halloween though."

"Mr. Potter, would you kindly desist uttering the Dark Lord's name and assigning him asinine nicknames?" Professor Snape half asked and half demanded as he glared at the teen.

"How else am I supposed to distinguish between the various forms the monster takes? I mean really, I've not once fought the same two faces; not even when he had two faces."

Professor Snape pinched his nose in irritation before he promptly ignored Harry as he returned his attention to the wand that Harry had given him, placed the tip of his wand against Edgecombe's wand, and incanted, "_Prior Incantato_."

Harry watched with rapt attention as Edgecombe's wand began spitting out ghostly echoes of each and every spell that had been cast during their short battle and his torture session before it spewed forth the spells the girl had used on her friend while under Voldemort's influence. Green clouds of mist were killing curses that had missed their targets, slashes of light the color of freshly spilt blood were cutting curses, exploding clouds of red were blasting curses, yellow clouds were Crucios that had missed their target, and the ghostly screams accompanied with blasts of different colors were those crucios and pain curses that had hit Harry during the ten minutes he was tortured.

There were, of course, other echoes mixed in with the recognizable ones.

The point at which Harry had first been attacked was easily marked by a final scream accompanied by Hedwig's pained screech before the spell moved onto those spells that had been used on Chang. Harry cuddled his familiar and ran his fingers through her crest feathers as she voiced several complaints after hearing her own voice in pain, even though it was nothing but a weak echo. He eventually lay back in the bed at Professor McGonagall's urging where he soon fell asleep with Hedwig preening his hair as his exhaustion and the continued pain finally caught up with him.

He woke up several hours later when his body alerted him to the fact that he was no longer in pain with Hedwig curled up contentedly on his chest. Unwilling to disturb his familiar and unsure whether or not she was still suffering from her exposure to the Cruciatus Curse, Harry didn't bother trying to sit up. As he lay there, Harry opened his Menu to check his Stats before he withdrew a book to pass the time while he waited for Hedwig to wake. He had barely been reading for an hour when the Hospital Wing was invaded by his companions a second time; this time with Luna in tow.

"Are you feeling any better?" Hermione asked as she bounded up to the bed the instant that she realized that he was awake; the sound of her voice waking the occamy.

"Much better," Harry replied as he sat up after Hedwig uncoiled herself and shifted up to his pillow.

"How much pain are you still in from… from the curses?" Neville asked hesitantly.

"None right now. In truth, I'm far more concerned with Hedwig's current health as she's never been hurt like that before; not even when she fought and blinded the basilisk last year."

"I'm so sorry! It's all my fault," Luna blurted out unexpectedly as she burst into tears. "If I hadn't found Rowena's Lost Diadem, then no one would have been attacked. I tried to get rid of it after I began to forget things each time I wore it but then Marietta took it from me at the end of the winter holidays because she thought it was a piece of junk daddy had sent to me for Christmas. I wanted to tell you sooner but I couldn't because the spirit in the diadem kept a close eye on me through Marietta after she started wearing the diadem to taunt me with it towards the end of February. I was also scared that they'd blame me for attacking that boy on Halloween night and throw me into Azkaban even though I don't remember doing it."

"They didn't send Ginny…" George stated as he dropped a hand on the distraught second year's shoulder.

"…to Azkaban last year…" Fred continued as he ruffled Luna's hair.

"…and she'd been possessed by You-Know-Who all year long," George finished succinctly as he squeezed her shoulder.

"That's why she didn't come back…"

"…this year for her second year…"

"…since she needed time to finish healing."

"She'll be back next year though."

"You know, I did hear Ginny once say that she had lots of lost time last year," Fred added thoughtfully after a giving Luna time to digest that revelation.

"Ginny won't talk 'bout it with us…"

"…but she might be willing to talk to you next year…"

"…if'n ya tell her about your blackouts."

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to but it might help to talk to someone that went through the same thing that you did," Hermione interjected softly. "Marietta might also…"

"I won't talk to Marietta. She hates me; she's one of the ones that locked me out of our common room all last year and all this year too," Luna countered with a shake of her head. "She's also the reason why I was outside all alone the day the dementor attacked me; the spirit in the diadem wanted me dead so I couldn't tell anyone about it. And I don't know if I could ask Ginny; she stopped being my friend after mummy died and she refused to talk to me at all since we both started Hogwarts last year."

"Hey, James, did Madam Pomfrey tell you how long you have to stay in the Hospital Wing this time?" Neville inquired in an attempt to change the subject and draw the attention away from the now uncomfortable second year.

"No, not yet but I imagine she'll at least keep me in here all weekend," Harry groused as he absently scratched at the newly healed scar that ran along his jaw line; the dark magic that had caused the injury preventing it from being fully healed (the spell used had been the same one that he'd been hit with during his first Christmas in MaM). "She'd probably keep me in here all next week as well too if not for the fact that our End-of-Year Exams start on Monday."

Fred and George both groaned dramatically and mock scolded Harry for reminding them that they'd be sitting for their O.W.L.s a week from Monday (the official exams being held the week after the regular exams were held in order to give the fifth and seventh years an extra week to prepare). The five of them were kicked out shortly after that as Madam Pomfrey delivered Harry's supper and gave him another once over to make certain he wasn't in any pain and that she hadn't missed any of his injuries.

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**Translations:** Japanese to English

Mendoukusei – troublesome (also translated as this sucks or what a drag)

**Game Terminology:**

Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

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**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	23. Ceremonies

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Twenty-Three: Ceremonies

_Saturday, June 08, 2024 1:25 PM_

Harry's estimate of when he'd be released from Madam Pomfrey's clutches was fairly accurate; he was kicked out of the infirmary shortly after breakfast on Sunday morning. He'd barely made it five steps out of the Hospital Ward when he was waylaid by Professor McGonagall with a summons from Headmaster Dumbledore. Upon entering the Headmaster's Office, Harry found an auror waiting to question him regarding the attack. He answered the man's questions as clearly as possible before allowing the man to copy out his memory of the entire incident (along with politely requesting a copy of the memory for his Inventory).

Once that was over, Harry snuck down into the Chamber of Secrets to escape from the curious students that filled the halls. He found Hermione, Neville, and Luna inside of the main chamber working on the garden while Remus and Sirius were off helping the twins revise for their O.W.L.s. Harry would spend the rest of the morning bouncing between helping his peers and playing with the young centaurs that had missed him since he'd been unable to join them on Friday evening like he usually did.

Harry was grilled a second time about the attack over lunch by his virtual godfather. The man had disappeared for an hour directly after the meal. Harry later saw Gaki taking off out through the tunnels carrying a red envelop which told Harry that Sirius had sent Dumbledore a howler (and probably a prank hex or two tied to said howler). All six teens were then ordered to eat supper in the Great Hall that night by Sirius where they got dinner and a show as Gaki delivered the howler right in the middle of the meal where Dumbledore couldn't turf it in his rubbish bin to avoid having his ears blistered by Sirius's angry voice.

The most amusing part of the entire thing had been the fact that Professor McGonagall had stuck Dumbledore to his seat and petrified him with a Full-Body-Bind Curse to prevent him from leaving the room with the howler or vanishing the verbal chastisement. Seeing the bearded wizard sprout hairy warts, oozing pustules, and several other disgusting skin blemishes courtesy of the hexes Sirius had placed on the letter was just icing on the cake. Harry wore a tiny smirk of appreciation for the duration of the meal and all through dessert. Remus would copy his memory later that night so that he and Sirius could watch the entire thing.

Harry, Hermione, and Neville didn't see much of Luna or the twins over the course of the next week as all four of the younger magicals took their exams and studied in between tests. After being privately tutored for the second half of the year by Remus and Sirius, the three third years all but breezed through their exams. The only problem Harry had was with his Defense Against the Dark Arts test because the practical required him to confront a boggart. In order to prevent mass panic and the destruction of the new Defense Classroom (the old one still not fully repaired), Harry's practical was held outside on the grounds where there was plenty of room and nothing to break.

The constant exposure to Aincrad's last moments during his dementor lessons had partially numbed Harry to the appearance of the Skull Reaper during the practical and unlike the first time he faced a Boggart, he had not frozen the moment it changed into the Boss Monster and began shattering his friends and father. Sirius had also helped him to come up with a couple of ways to turn the giant monstrosity into something that could be laughed at in order to defeat the creature. It was still not an easy spell for Harry to cast, because his grief still overwhelmed him and made it harder to hold the image he wished to force the boggart into.

It took him three tries to defeat the boggart.

The moment he succeeding in casting the spell, the Skull Reaper let out a shrill scream of pain that turned into a frightened squeak as the towering monstrosity shrank down to the side of a large mouse before Agil's avatar stomped on the tiny bone Reaper. Harry let out a loud 'ha' as Agil grinned roguishly at him before the flattened Skull Reaper and all of the human avatars that were present shattered; Harry's spell and forceful laugh killing the creature. He received the Boggart's Heart in the drop; an item that had taken on the appearance of the shrunken Skull Reaper due to the boggart being under the influence of his fears at the time of its death.

On Saturday the eighth, Harry would face what he believed was the final Dungeon test of the year (even if there wasn't an actual Dungeon involved).

The rather dreary and overcast day had actually started out on a positive note as the final match of the Interhouse Quidditch Tournament between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff was scheduled to take place that day. The only reason the match hadn't been canceled was because Harry had caught (and destroyed) the individual that had been attacking the students (Marietta's name and involvement hushed up completely in order to protect her since the only victim that had seen her face was Harry and he knew it had been Voldemort behind the entire ordeal).

The game would be one of the longest Harry had ever played in to date as the snitch had vanished early on. The scores for both teams climbed well into the three hundreds by the time the gold ball made its first appearance and Harry raced alongside Cedric Diggory (Hufflepuff's seeker) for close to twenty minutes before it disappeared again. Harry had then goaded the older boy into a showmanship contest in order to pass the time until the snitch made another appearance. The two of them pulled off an assortment of tricks and death defying stunts; much to the surprise of nearly all the students and staff as they'd never before seen Harry show off during a game.

The Gryffindor chasers took advantage of the Hufflepuff keeper's shock at seeing Harry practically waltz across the sky with his broom and scored over a hundred points during the next forty minutes of the game; lengthening the lead that Gryffindor had been maintaining since the start of the game. His spell casting sessions with Sirius and Remus had done more than just improve his ability to dodge and cast simultaneously, after all.

At the end of those forty minutes, the snitch reappeared and both seekers dove after the golden ball as it led them on yet another wild goose chase. Harry had just pulled ahead due to having a superior broom (he had received a Firebolt from his godfather for Christmas that year) when the dementors attacked en mass once more. The four foot teen immediately abandoned the snitch in favor of putting distance between himself and the horde of dementors in order to give himself enough space to cast the Patronus Charm. The huge silver bear came out swinging his axe right and left as it climbed up through the air to place itself between Harry and the attacking demons.

Harry pulled his broom to a stop once his memories were no longer in danger of drowning him and put away his wand as he prepared to put an end to the dementors. He then took a deep breath and commanded the wind to shove the clouds clear so that the sun shown down on the dementors (causing them pain due to their love of the shadows). He then brought his hands up to call a wide circle of flames into being around him that he expanded outwards to engulf the closest of the dementors that had surrounded him. Ash rained down on the pitch below as he increased the temperatures of the flames in the blink of an eye (much like he had when he'd destroyed the dementors he'd hunted in the forest since the night he'd rescued Luna from one of the demons).

The patronuses that had been cast by those staff members and adults in the stands that knew how stopped in mid-charge as their targets unexpectedly disappeared. Harry's bear in the mean time continued to chase away the few dementors that had not been caught in the fire spell.

Unfortunately, while he'd been busy facing close to three dozen demons, Cedric had caught the snitch before he had realized why Harry had dropped out of the chase (Harry had felt the dementors' presence long before the older seeker had noted them). Despite Harry losing the snitch for the first time since he'd been introduced to the game (strictly because of extenuating circumstances), Gryffindor still won the match and the Quidditch Cup for the year due to the two hundred plus lead that his team's chasers had gained during the forty minutes that the Hufflepuff team had been distracted by Harry's wild broom stunts. The twins would later rib Harry about losing the snitch because he'd wanted to show off his dementor slaying talent in front of the crowd.

The very next day all of the surviving dementors (which numbered less than a dozen) were rounded up by the Ministry and removed from the school (in order to protect the demons from Harry) much to the satisfaction of the centaurs and Harry. The Minister had tried to fine Harry a million galleons for destroying Ministry property but Dumbledore intervened and claimed that it had been accidental magic that had destroyed the dementors since it was well known that wizards couldn't create fire wandlessly let alone create flames that burned hotter than fiend fire (the headmaster not realizing that Harry had never known what he'd done should have been impossible and was therefore entirely possible in his mind).

Three days after the dementors were removed, the grades for the first, second, third, fourth, and sixth years were released and Harry learned that he'd tied with Hermione for the top spot in their year for the second year in a row. Harry probably would have been ranked first in his year if not for his Defense score being so low due to how long it had taken him to deal with the boggart. (Harry personally thought Professor Dawlish had marked Harry down out of spite because the man had never forgiven Harry for unleashing the Skull Reaper that first time.) Neville had managed to climb up in the ranks again as well, the once clumsy boy squeaking into the top five spots by the skin of his teeth to claim spot number five.

The last few days of the term passed by far too quickly and Harry once again found himself standing on the main stairs as he bitterly watched the other students pour out of the castle on their way home for the summer. Hermione and Neville had both gained permission from their guardians for Harry to spend the summer with them but their offers had been stonewalled by Dumbledore (who was still Harry's guardian despite Sirius's status as his in-game godfather).

Sirius and Remus had both snuck back out of the castle in the confusion of departing students so that they could openly return for the duration of the summer holiday later that same day. Once the last of the students had exited the castle, the two men and one teen would disappear into the Chamber of Secrets for the night before heading out into the forest bright and early the next morning. They'd barely been in the forest for half an hour when Bane found them and politely inquired if Harry would like to join the herd in driving out a particularly vicious kelpie that had moved into the river that ran through their village during the months that they'd taken refuge within the tunnels beneath the forest.

"A kelpie?" Harry asked Bane curiously as he tipped his head back to meet the gaze of the much taller centaur. "They're a kind of water demon right?"

"That is correct, young mage," Bane agreed as he pawed at the ground with his left front hoof. "The foul creatures don't often invade our borders but due to the cold demons invading our forest all year long, we were not able to drive this one out before it took up residence in the ford of the river that lies inside of our village. We daren't move the yearlings, mares, and foals back into the village until the demon has been chased out or destroyed because our young are vulnerable to the kelpie's tricks and our mares are still nursing this season's foals."

"At least there isn't a chance that they'll send dementors to the school again; the Ministry was more than a little upset with me for destroying around twenty of the demons last weekend. That and there had been no sign of Rookwood any where near here all year so they can't justify keeping them on the school grounds now that everyone else has left the castle. I still don't know why they sent them in the first place; stupid things attacked more students for no reason than any other monster in the forest."

"Only twenty? Last I counted you'd destroyed well over thirty of the demons throughout the forest long before you faced the full horde in the sky."

"True, but what the Ministry doesn't know won't hurt me," Harry replied with a smirk; he'd killed close to sixty of the dementors in total since he'd rescued Luna from the demons back at the end of March.

"Be careful that you do not make enemies of the Ministry, young mage, they are not kind to those that stand against them," Bane warned seriously as he stomped his foot and flicked his tail in irritation.

"I am not afraid of the Ministry and the story line of this game set the entity that is the Ministry up as my enemy right from the start so I'm not surprised that they constantly seek to cause trouble for me. I am certain that I will have to face them at some point or another to end the game but that probably won't happen until after I defeat Voldemort at least four more times; one for each year I am forced to remain at Hogwarts. There are times when I really hate the way this world is set up. Not even SAO had as many messed up rules and corrupted NPCs as MaM does."

"You walk in the light of Mars," Bane intoned with an air of mysticism, the centaur once more falling back into the old habit of speaking in vague riddles that drove most humans up a wall; which is why they did it.

"I'd much rather walk beneath the shadows of the trees," Harry complained with a scowl as he glanced back towards the castle. "Anyway, I'm game for helping you face the kelpie; I've been itching for a real hunt since I was forced out of the forest last summer. Facing the dementors these last couple of months helped but I still prefer sticking to merely risking life and limb during my battles rather than risking my mind and soul."

"You are a strange creature, young mage; quite unlike any human I have ever met."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"Well, what are we waiting for? Why are you just standing around when we've got a forest to terrorize, squirt?" Sirius demanded as he clapped his hands together and smirked at the prospect of having a little fun (the older wizard pointedly ignoring the bits of the conversation he hadn't understood).

"Are you sure you're up to it old man? I wouldn't want you shattering from too much excitement."

"Didn't I tell you he was a cheeky little brat?" Sirius complained to Remus even as he grinned at Harry.

"It would appear that he's been spending too much time hanging around you then," Remus pointed out with a smirk.

Harry laughed as he trotted after Bane when the centaur turned around and began leading the way deeper into the forest while Remus and Sirius fell into step beside him. They hadn't gone very far before they were joined by Firenze, Ronan, and two young centaurs whose names Harry couldn't remember; the youngsters looking to earn their place as hunters for the herd now that they were well into their eighth season (or in human terms, both males had just over two years old). From the sky above the trees, Hedwig let out a screech as she tracked the group from the sky; the occamy enjoying the chance to stretch out her wings after being cooped up for most of the year in the castle.

The eight of them reached the centaur's village and the river near mid-morning. Harry sucked in a sharp breath as he laid eyes on the water demon for the first time. At first glance, the bluish green creature looked like a horse until you got a good look at its moss entangled mane and tail, shimmering scale-like skin, and draconic features. It was also far larger than any horse Harry had ever seen (though even a good number of pony breeds would tower over the pint-sized teen; a fact that still annoyed the not quite fourteen year old wizard even though he knew it was because he was still stuck in a game).

After taking a good long look at the kelpie, Harry moved forward to engage it in battle while Sirius and Remus split off to either side in order to contain it in the shallower part of the river and the five centaurs spread out to prevent the creature from fleeing over the land (Bane and Ronan crossing to the far side of the river while Firenze stayed to watch over the two younger males). It took the concentrated efforts of all eight participants to bring the powerful demon down with the two youngest centaurs landing the killing blow from a distance after Harry trapped it in a Dragon Wire Net Trap above the water where it could not dodge or draw upon the magic flowing through the water (which is where kelpies drew their power from). Though, Remus had spent most of the time watching Harry fight; this being the werewolf's first time seeing Harry battle a monster outside of the dementors and the occasional Red Cap or Ghoul.

The Items dropped were divvied up between both groups; the centaurs taking the Kelpie Mane and Tail Hairs to make bowstrings and thread, Remus and Sirius taking the Kelpie Hide (so they could turn it into a throw rug for Padfoot and Moony), and Harry keeping the Kelpie Heart (a small greenish-blue crystal shaped like a horse skull). The eight warriors would celebrate the joint defeat of the demon and the two young males' elevation into the ranks of herd's hunters (which involved them being christened with their adult names by their sires) with centaurian nettle wine before they discussed the merits of hunting down a small pack of Nogtails in the area.

Harry, in a moment of drunken abandon (the teen unaccustomed to true alcohol), entered into a blood pact with the two drunken two year olds; making the three of them blood brothers after a fashion (and changing both centaurs' NPC halos into a trio of status bars). Caleo (a bright chestnut centaur with long red hair and tail and a temper) and Orsus (a rather curious male with a dappled dark gray hide and ivory hair and tail) would spend the rest of the month with Harry and the two adult wizards as they culled the acromantula colony and cleared out some of the more troublesome pests (including the herd of Nogtails) that had thrived in the absence of Harry and the centaurs in the forest all year long.

Ronan and Firenze occasionally turned up to check on the group but for the most part the herd allowed the two younger males to patrol the forest and watch over the young mage (and now honorary member of the herd thanks to the ritual that the trio had performed while drunk) as part of their new duties.

The bonded trio would spend the first two weeks of July in the centaur village (without Sirius or Remus present) as Harry was formally adopted into the herd to finish what the trio had started with their blood pact and in order to train the young wizard in the ways of the herd so that he would not disgrace their herd should he encounter another herd at some point in the future. His adoption involved another blood ritual, this time with Firenze as the palomino stepped forward to claim Harry as his colt in light of the fact that Orsus was his son (Firenze also gained the status bars once the ritual was complete). Ronan could have also stepped forward for the same reason (since Caleo was his son) but the red centaur had allowed Firenze the opportunity to do so first since the pale centaur had known Harry the longest.

Magorian then branded Harry's left flank with the mark of the herd; which turned out to be a tattoo that was placed high on the side of Harry's left buttock (much to his embarrassment) in the form of a hoof print with three stars (representing Orion's belt) sitting inside of the hoof print. The tattoo had been done in deep black so that it would stand out clearly against his skin to better identify him as a member of the Orion Herd (a name Harry had learned only after he'd been adopted). Harry could feel the magic of the tattoo tingling against his skin once it was finished; magic that felt and tasted of the earth, trees, and wind.

Firenze's mate (a pretty dappled gray mare with black hair and tail named Willow) then glued and braided six strands each of hers, Firenze's, Orsus's, Caleo's (added because he was Harry's bonded brother too) and Breeze's (Firenze and Willow's newborn filly – centaurs only gave birth every two years) tail hairs into a tuft of hair behind Harry's left ear. Normally the braid would have been added to his tail the moment he took his first step (if he'd been born a centaur) but Harry lacked a tail so they added the braid to his hair instead. Once his braid had been finished, six strands of his hair (three of each color) were then bound into his new family's tail braids (including Caleo's). It wasn't the formal adoption that Firenze had done but his mate had effectively accepted him as one of her foals by being the one to weave Harry's 'tail' braid.

Once that ritual was complete, Harry was inducted into the rank of hunter (his skills well known and respected amongst the herd) and christened with the adult name of Bellator by Firenze.

The herd celebrated Harry's adoption and his induction as a hunter long into the night; though this time Harry wisely drank sparingly of the nettle wine that flowed freely all night long. The only thing that marred the occasion was the fact that the young wizard desperately wished that Agil could have been there to witness the entire event. It was a bittersweet moment that poignantly reminded him of his absent father and friends and made the hole in his heart ache even as he laughed and danced beneath the starlight with his new siblings and adopted parents.

When those two weeks were over, Harry threw himself back into the hunt with a vengeance in order to grow stronger in the hopes that he could finish the game soon (not that his steady growth had really helped him much over the past three years). By the time his birthday rolled around, his emotions were centered once more; even if he still felt rather frustrated that he'd lost nearly three years since Aincrad's fall. Sirius and Remus were both curious as to what Harry got up to during those two weeks he'd spent with the centaurs but all he was allowed to tell them (by herd law) was that he'd been formally adopted into the herd and given his adult name.

Harry's birthday was spent back in the Chamber of Secrets (by request of Dobby). Harry and his centaurian brothers held an archery contest that he soundly lost (Harry no where near as strong as the two stallions and therefore not able to shot an arrow as far as they could though he was at least an accurate shot). He soothed his bruised pride by beating both Remus and Sirius in a spell casting contest that Harry won hands down (thanks to all the practice he'd had during his third year). After that the five of them ate cake and ice cream and drank butterbeer and blackberry wine (a very sweet elfish wine that actually contained less alcohol than butterbeer did).

Gaki turned up about that time along with a majestic great horned owl and a strange looking owl with long feathers growing out from the sides of his eyes (he'd later learn this was a long-whiskered owl); all three birds carrying packages addressed to Harry. The gifts were from Hermione, Neville, and Luna (respectively). Hermione sent him six young red and white long-finned koi, Neville gave him water lily bulbs, and Luna sent him two dozen live tadpoles; all three of the gifts intended for the pond because the other teens had planned their gifts together.

Fred and George's gift arrived later that night with a decrepit owl that had seen far better days and contained a large bundle of vegetable, squash, and tuber sprouts (corn, green beans, peas, potatoes, turnips, radishes, and watermelon to name a few) for the garden and three sleeping garden gnomes. Hagrid gave him a large oak perch the man had carved over the course of the year; the piece stood a foot shorter than Harry and had been designed to look like a miniature knarled tree without leaves. The stand was plenty large enough to hold up to six owls all at once or one full-grown occamy comfortably.

Harry had Dobby set it up between the feet of Slytherin's statue where the pale wood stood out starkly against the dark stone the statue had been carved out of.

It was the first time any of them had given him birthday gifts and Harry frowned when he realized that he had no idea when his frequent companions' birthdays were. He wrote himself a reminder to ask them each when their birthdays were once they returned to the school for the next year in the calendar section of his in-game planner. He'd dig through his Inventory to find an appropriate gift for each of them once he knew their birth dates so as not to appear rude. Right after he finished writing out that note, he asked Sirius and Remus for their birth dates and promptly marked them down in his calendar so that he wouldn't forget; something he probably should have done for his godfather two years earlier (once he'd actively stopped trying to avoid the man).

Caleo and Orsus took charge of the sprouts and planted them in the small planter that had been added against the wall between the statue and the entrance to Harry's spell casting range. While they were doing that, Remus helped Harry to plant the water lily bulbs and taught him a spell to float the small pots they were planted in just beneath the surface of the water so they were easy to maintain and wouldn't slip too low and Sirius released the fish and tadpoles into the water. The gnomes were released to join the wild forest gnomes that the centaurs had brought in months earlier; the root loving pests had a special little garden filled with their favorites at the far end of the Chamber (their section cordoned off from the rest of the garden so they wouldn't be tempted to destroy the rest of the plants).

Over the next week, Harry stuck close to the castle and spent a bit of time with Hagrid (making certain to get the man's birthdate as well) since he'd not visited the giant of a man as often as he previously had due to the dementors on the ground. When Harry had mentioned the underground garden that had been built in the Chamber of Secrets, the man recommended some non-native critters and plants that would not be too invasive to introduce. The live additions he suggested were also, surprisingly, rather harmless creatures that wouldn't wipe out the native residents that were now firmly entrenched in the man, elf, and centaur made garden paradise.

At the end of that week, Hagrid would join Harry and the others as they headed up into the mountains to track down Norbert the Norwegian; the dragon had not been seen in just over a year and the groundskeeper was worried about his baby. Harry hunted dark creatures during the trip up in order to stock up on Hedwig's favorites (his poor familiar had had to make do with domestic meats for most of the year due to the dementors) in case his hunting trips were curtailed again over the coming school year. This mostly involved hunting Bugbears, Nogtails, and a Bicorn or two. He also helped his newly adopted brothers gather wild berries, nuts, and edible flowers, leaves, and roots that didn't grow in the lower altitudes in order to take them back to the village for their winter stores when they returned to the lower forest towards the end of the month.

The group would find a highly defensive nesting mother-dragon-to-be at the end of their trek. Norbert actually turned out to be Norberta; dragon gender difficult to discern until a female was old enough to clutch for the first time. Apparently the reason that Norberta had not visited was because she'd found herself a friend; a prospect that excited Hagrid as he dreamed of cooing over a small flock of his own personal dragons.

If not for Hedwig's presence, Harry was certain that Norberta would have crispy fried the six of them the moment they'd approached her cave. As it was, the cranky dragon barely tolerated them standing in the mouth of the cave where they could plainly see her distended belly. Harry and Hagrid both actually were allowed to approach Norberta at the end of their three-day stay in the mountains; the dragon had finally gotten used to their presence and determined that they meant her no harm. It helped that Harry had offered her a few treats from out of his Inventory to remind her that he was a friend.

Harry actually got up the courage to run his hand over the dragon's belly and he found it fascinating that he could feel a number of egg bumps beneath her smooth scales when he dragged his palm downwards over her belly. Hagrid would have stayed behind to care for his baby when the others left if Harry hadn't thoughtfully promised the man that he'd have Dobby deliver a cow every now and then to provide the young mother with plenty of food. Though Harry personally figured that the father of her clutch was hanging around somewhere nearby and that he'd resume tending the expectant mother as soon as they left.

The group separated at the foot of the mountains as Hagrid, Sirius, and Remus headed for the castle (Hagrid to his home and the other two to Chamber of Secrets) while the mismatched trio of bonded brothers headed to their village to deliver their harvest to the herd. It wasn't long after sunset that evening that the trio of young hunters stumbled upon a Banshee as they searched for a safe and comfortable place to camp for the night. The only reason that Harry had recognized the creature was because Seamus's Boggart had taken the form of a Banshee during their first lesson on the fear inducing shape-shifters.

No one moved for several long minutes when the Banshee glanced up and caught sight of them. The moment the gaunt looking creature that looked vaguely like an old lady with ankle length black hair and greenish tinged skin sucked in a deep breath in preparation for letting out her deadly wailing cry, the trio burst into action. Caleo and Orsus whipped their bows off their backs and fired a volley of arrows while Harry dashed forward as he pulled his wand from his Inventory. The creature moved out of the way of the arrows and focused her attention on the centaurs in irritation, giving Harry the perfect opening to kill her with a blasting curse to the face as soon as he had crossed half the distance between them.

The Banshee shattered without having uttered a sound and Harry skidded to a stop as the two centaurs trotted forward and clapped him on the back in congratulations for a successful hunt. They quickly left the area after that in case there was another of the creatures nearby and put off setting up camp for another good two hours. Once they did set up camp, they shared a small meal of fresh berries, elf made bread, and hard cheese (the latter two coming out of Harry's food supplies that had been provided by Dobby).

After the meal, Harry split the drop from the banshee with the two centaurs; giving them three-quarters of the Banshee Hair he'd picked up. The long strands were highly prized by the centaurs as thread due to their length and durability on top of how rare it was for them to actually obtain a handful of strands; usually collected from branches after a Banshee had passed through the area. Harry kept the other quarter of hair and the Banshee's Heart (a pale green crystal globe about the size of his fist filled with mist that swirled endlessly inside of it).

Caleo woke Harry before the sun rose the next morning so they could continue their journey; the three of them traveling much faster than they had previously (Harry easily keeping up with the other two using Sprint). The two young centaurs were eager to get home in order to show off the wealth of Banshee Hair they had collected (something that would raise their status within the eyes of the herd due to how hard it normally was for a centaur to kill a Banshee). In a way, defeating the Banshee together would be seen as a confirmation that Orsus and Caleo had not weakened the herd by entering a blood pact with a two-legged upstart child (which was how some of the older centaurs saw Harry, even if they grudgingly respected his skills).

Their return to the village later that evening, bearing the spoils and fruits of their journey, sparked yet another wild celebration and Harry was beginning to suspect that centaurs used any little excuse to drink, dance, and tell stories in order to make up for the stoic façade that they maintained in front of most humans and other beings. Harry didn't dwell on that for too long though as he conservatively sipped nettle wine, dined on centaurian favorites, bragged about his exploits with the other young stallions, and danced with his adoptive mother, his adopted sister, and a few unattached mares.

Harry would then spend the next six days learning how to dry and preserve the fruits, nuts, flowers, leaves, and roots that had been gathered. He also learned how to skin and butcher animals (something that was difficult for him due to the dead animals tending to shatter the moment he was no longer touching them), and cure and tan hides the hard way (his still unacknowledged magic usually taking care of that due to the way it had been twisted by his time in SAO). On top of that, some of the young unattached mares taught him centaurian poems and songs and the steps to some of the more complex dances (though Harry had a hard time with some of them simply because he didn't have four legs).

He even managed to find time to play with the yearlings that were still young enough to enjoy playing games and the foals that had been born at the end of spring; usually when it was his and his bonded brothers' turn to watch over the young in order to keep them out of trouble and keep trouble from finding them. The mares especially loved it when Harry wore the foals out just before they bedded the little ones down for the night because he usually exhausted them as they attempted to catch him while playing tag (Sprint was very useful for dodging at the last second).

His two brothers occasionally joined in the games, though they usually patrolled the area to keep watch for enemies that would attack the vulnerable foals and half trained yearlings while Harry kept the younger centers occupied. Harry also guarded the area where they played with his Listening and Detecting Skills though his brothers didn't know that.

On the twenty-eighth of August, Remus's wolf patronus danced into the village and politely requested for Harry to return to the Chamber of Secrets so that they could take him to Diagon Alley to purchase his supplies for the coming year. Harry was fascinated by the concept of using a patronus as an instant messenger of sorts but resented the reality of his imprisonment within MaM intruding on his time with the herd. Bane and Firenze escorted him to the edge of the forest shortly after he received the message for old time's sake and because Harry was dragging his heels in an attempt to put off his return for as long as possible.

In the end, Harry bid the two centaurs good day in the late afternoon and slipped down into one of the hidden tunnel entrances near the edge of the forest (so he wouldn't chance running into Dumbledore traveling through the castle's hallways).

* * *

**Translations:** Latin to English

Bellator – fighting man or warrior  
Caleo – to be warmed or inflamed (son of Ronan)  
Orsus – a beginning, undertaking, or initiative (son of Firenze)

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat

**Game Terminology:**

Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

* * *

Harry's MaM Data/Stats Page (End of 3rd Year &amp; after his 14th birthday):

**Classification:** Gryffindor Student  
**Level:** Third Year – Complete  
**Student Rank:** 01 (Tied H. Granger)  
**Health:** Incalculable  
**HP:** Incalculable  
**MP:** Incalculable  
**Familiar:** Hedwig (Occamy – Female)  
**Pet:** Gaki (Snowy Owl – Male)  
**Bonded House Elf:** Dobby  
**Patronus:** Large, Axe-wielding Bear  
**Special Titles:** Boy-Who-Lived, Child-Hero, Natural Flyer, Gryffindor Seeker, Centaurian Hunter Bellator,  
**Wallet:  
**Galleons – 1478  
Sickles – 1532  
Knuts – 2651

**Main Equipment:**

Bag of Holding – Has unlimited space and masks weight of contents  
Broom – Firebolt  
School Uniform – Pants, shirt, vest, tie, robes, shoes, and hat (Basic Clothing with no special capabilities)  
Wand – 11 inches, Holly and Phoenix Feather  
Cloak of Invisibility – A cloak that renders the wearer invisible

**Skills:** (Levels – Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Proficient, &amp; Mastered)

**Magical Knowledge: **

Ancient Runes – Intermediate  
Animagus Theory – Intermediate  
Arithmancy – Intermediate  
Astronomy – Advanced  
Magical Creatures – Advanced  
Magical History – Advanced  
Magical Plants – Advanced  
Magical Theory – Advanced

**Spell Casting: **

Charms – Intermediate  
Defense – Intermediate  
Offense – Intermediate  
Transfiguration – Intermediate

**Practical Skills: **

Archery – Intermediate  
Flying – Mastered  
Herbology – Advanced  
Hunting – Advanced (based upon spells used/mastered)  
Potions – Advanced

* * *

**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	24. Friendship

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Four: Friendship

_Reflections of a Teenage Witch:  
September 2021 through August 2024_

Hermione Jane Granger had been born on September nineteenth in the year two thousand nine. She'd been both blessed and cursed with untamable bushy hair, overlarge front teeth, a photographic memory, and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Growing up, she'd been isolated from her peers due to her rather plain looks, her unshakable love of books, and her tendency of running off at the mouth whenever she spoke about the things she'd learned. Books were her only friends and she had found comfort in the authority figures that kept the worst of the bullies off her back.

She was a lonely little girl though, and she desperately wanted and needed to know why she was so different after she'd begun noticing the odd things that happened around her when she was overcome by strong emotions. During the summer before her twelfth birthday, she thought she'd found the answer and the solution to her problems; she was an honest to goodness wand-waving witch and she'd been invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry alongside her fellow prepubescent witches and wizards.

At first, she thought that she might finally be able to make a friend or two amongst those that were just like her and so she'd devoured dozens of books about the new world she was entering so she would be fully prepared for her new life. When she discovered that she'd be attending classes alongside one of the most famous wizards in all of Britain (and most of continental Europe), she'd been more than a little excited because she'd never met a child celebrity before.

During the weeks leading up to the day she was due to start her new life, she often wondered what kind of person Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, would be and if he'd bully her like the other popular children or if he'd be a true hero and protect her from the bullies. She also wondered what the other witches and wizards her age would be like and if any of them would share any of her interests. Hermione had been more than a little disappointed to find that young witches and wizards were really no different than children of the more normal variety.

She was even more disappointed when she learned that Harry Potter wasn't joining them due to health reasons and Hermione wondered if the child hero was dying due to complications from being struck with a killing curse.

Things like that were bound to have an affect on a body, after all.

The young witch pushed her disappointment and homesickness out of her mind as she threw herself into her magical classwork in an effort to make up for her continued lack of friends with the usual overabundance of knowledge. She tried to win her fellow first years over by sharing her knowledge but she only succeeded in pushing them further away until she'd finally begun to believe she'd made a mistake in thinking she belonged in the wizarding world any more than she belonged in the normal world. After being cruelly reminded of how she didn't have any friends and how no one could stand her, she'd locked herself in the nearest bathroom and seriously contemplated begging her parents to let her come home.

The fifteen foot troll that had interrupted her life changing decision making process had inspired true fear in the lonely little witch and the rest of her problems disappeared instantly as her imminent death roared down at her from somewhere around three times her height. The timely arrival of the professors brought relief and tears; even if they hadn't arrived before she'd been clipped on the right side of her chest by the troll's jagged tree-limb club. The revelation that the shy boy she'd taken the time to help on the train had been the catalyst for her rescue had her reevaluating her situation. A tentative offer of friendship between boy and girl saw Hermione discarding all plans to run home with her tail tucked between her legs.

At the same time, she withdrew into herself and stopped seeking the attention of her professors. She'd lost a bit of faith in them because they'd never have bothered to go looking for her that fateful night if not for one Neville Longbottom braving detention or worse (in Hermione's mind) expulsion to notify their Head of House that she was missing. The staff hadn't even noticed her absence during the Halloween Feast. There was also the fact that her close brush with death changed her inside. It is hard not to change when you are faced with the certain knowledge that you are going to die and that there is nothing you can do to change that because for all your hard won knowledge, you haven't learned how to defend yourself.

So, Hermione sought to learn more practical magic rather than focus extensively on the theoretical side as she had been since she first learned about the magical world (she had wanted to know how spells worked before learning how to make them work) and let her presence fade into the background where most everyone forgot about her. Having a friend helped as Neville quietly worked right alongside of her; the shy wizard wishing he could have done more to help her aside from run for a teacher after learning his help hadn't spared her from being hurt.

Just a couple of weeks after Hermione's life changing ordeal, rumors flew fast and thick through the castle that Harry Potter would be joining them soon. Like the other students, Hermione was eager to meet the boy hero and curious to know what had kept him from joining them at the start of the term.

The young witch's first look at the Boy-Who-Lived had shocked her to her core; he looked like he couldn't be more than seven or eight years old and she had trouble believing him to be an eleven year old boy. Once a person got past his stunted size, one would be struck by the terrible scars that marred the boy's face. Scars that looked nothing like the famed lightning bolt where the killing curse had purportedly hit him but two huge slashes that made it look as if some monstrous beast had tried to rip his face off.

Should you ever manage to see passed the scars and the shockingly bright twin patches of snow white hair nestled amidst the coal black hair, you would find a pair of intense, otherworldly emerald eyes that could pierce your soul to the quick with nothing more than a glance. Eyes that spoke of pain and suffering above and beyond anything Hermione had ever experienced or could ever fully understand without having lived through it. Those eyes frightened Hermione. They also stirred her heart and made her very soul ache for the child-hero (a title that truly fit the young wizard's visage).

If Hermione had to sum up Harry Potter with a single word after that first glimpse, it would be; tragic. His diminutive frame, his visible scars, and his silent suffering just screamed; I am a living, breathing tragedy.

Hermione hadn't known what to expect when she'd been asked to tutor Harry Potter to help him catch up on all that he missed of the first two and a half months of their classes alongside Neville and Prefect Weasley. She'd certainly not expected the overly serious, stiffly polite, and somewhat standoffish boy that listened to her long winded lectures with his complete attention and without a single complaint. She also hadn't expected him to ignore her outside of their tutoring sessions but after observing the way he kept _everyone_ at arm's length and actively chased away those that pestered him (with the help of the ill-tempered occamy that stuck to his side like glue), she stopped taking his lack of acknowledgement outside of their tutoring lessons personal.

After the first couple of weeks, Hermione began suspecting that his gruff attitude and refusal to open up to any of their fellow students was a defensive mechanism to avoid being hurt. She couldn't imagine what terrible tragedy would have driven the boy (who was practically the same age as her) to fear and shun everyone around him. The only times she'd ever seen him smile (small though it was) was when he was on his broom (after he'd been recruited as the Seeker for the Gryffindor Quidditch teams) or when he thought no one was watching him while he lavished attention on the scarlet and silver occamy that rarely left his side.

By the time the winter holidays had arrived that first year, Hermione had learned several things about the famous child wizard.

One; he disliked people calling him by his first name and he'd ignore or prank those that refused to stop calling him by his first name. Two; he had not sent or received a single letter in all the time he'd been at the school. Three; he could make his magic do things that most of the other students and staff that had been raised in the magical swore should be impossible. And four; his thirst for knowledge could quite possibly rival her own (though she'd later discover that his driving need to learn everything about the magical world had nothing to do with a love of learning and everything to do with his desperate search for an escape from said world).

After giving the matter some thought and asking Neville for his opinion, Hermione had purchased a box of Chocolate Frogs to give James for Christmas; a simple acknowledgement that he existed and that they had a working relationship (of sorts) but at the same time did not demand anything in return. Plus she'd noticed that he seemed fond of both chocolate and treacle tarts whenever he bothered to join everyone else in the Great Hall during meals. She'd not expected to receive a gift in return but wasn't surprised when she did because she'd noted early on that James had impeccable manners when he wasn't being hounded by others.

She'd been completely flabbergasted when she'd opened the belated gift (handed over the day she returned to the castle at the end of the winter holidays) to find a relatively heavy teardrop shaped pendant that was one inch in diameter at its widest point made from an unidentifiable shimmering brown and tan material strung on a delicate braided white cord. The note in the bottom of the box identified the pendant as being made out of a section of scale from a Sandy Wyvern (a creature she'd never heard of), the cord as being woven from Acromantula silk, and the entire gift being handcrafted by James. Hermione had immediately felt guilty for buying him a cheep box of chocolate when he'd gone through the trouble of making her such a personal gift.

She eventually learned that Neville and the Weasley twins had all received similar belated gifts (the scales used had been from different species and cut into different shapes – only the twins receiving identical pendants). Neville had received a deep green scale cut in the shape of a leaf and the twins had both received red scales shaped like foxes. Hermione never got a chance to thank James as he'd become exceedingly difficult to find after he'd delivered his gift and then the news that someone had tried to kill James on Christmas morning drove all thoughts of gifts out of her mind. After that, classes and homework filled her waking thoughts as the end of the year quickly approached.

Before Hermione knew it, the term was over and it was time to go home. She'd heard rumors that James had spent a day or two in the hospital after the end of year exams but he was tight lipped about what he'd been up to (which wasn't all that unusual) so she couldn't be certain how much truth there was in the rumors. The day the students were set to leave the castle, Hermione got a brief glimpse of James watching the other students leave with a sullen look upon his face. All the way home she'd tried to figure out what was bothering her about the image of James standing at the top of the stairs practically glaring down at the other students.

It wasn't until she greeted her parents as she exited the platform that it hit her; James hadn't been on the train, meaning that he had not left the castle with the rest of the students.

All summer long Hermione fretted over the reasons why James would be staying at the castle instead of going home. She didn't know who he lived with so she couldn't be certain whether or not he had a home to go home to and just because he didn't write to anyone didn't mean he didn't have anyone to take care of him (she suspected that his occamy might be a deterrent for using the school's owls to send letters based upon how it acted when other creatures approached James). Eventually, she came to the conclusion that maybe he had to stay at the school for part of the summer for health reasons; his glaring lack of height a potential indication that he'd been a sickly child.

Hermione's inner child shied away from the other obvious possible answer of him having been neglected or abused in his younger years and she had no knowledge of magical status charms or James's experience in SAO yet.

Her second year had been another eye opening experience as she witnessed a side of James that she hadn't known existed the day he'd killed the pixies that Professor Lockhart had brought to class. She'd been appalled by his seemingly casual disregard for the lives he'd taken but then looked at it logically when she thought about the creature he'd killed; a type of magical creature that was nothing more than an overgrown bug and a pest. It wasn't as if he'd killed a person or a sentient being, right?

She'd forgotten all about the incident by the time the Chamber of Secrets had been opened on Halloween night. A few people tried to blame the attack on James but he'd been sitting in the Great Hall for the duration of the entire feast right where everyone could see him. His mumbled mutters about research, monsters, and dungeons when he'd seen the crime scene had sent Hermione into research mode that resulted in her coming to the decision to brew Polyjuice Potion in order to get some answers from Malfoy; the only student that treated the opening of the Chamber as a good thing. Professor Lockhart didn't hesitate to give her permission to check out a book from the restricted section of the Library and all too soon Hermione was up to her neck in potential legal trouble if she got caught.

When Neville had followed her and discovered what she was doing, she feared that she'd be expelled in a heartbeat the moment he tattled on her. That he'd gone to James with what he learned shocked her rather than angered her but it was James's immediate offer to help that blew her mind away; James never went out of his way to help others. Then again, she thought he might have felt obligated to help her since she'd helped him get caught up the previous year and if there was one thing she'd learned about James, it was that he took his obligations and responsibilities seriously. The young witch had refrained from questioning him on how he'd managed to steal the last of the ingredients they needed to finish the potion without getting caught; she wasn't certain she wanted to know.

The fiasco the night of Lockhart's dueling club killed the little girl crush Hermione had had on the handsome professor and world famous wizard. While she thought James _might_ have earned the detentions he'd been given for killing the pixies, she thought it was _unreasonable_ for him to be given detentions because his familiar had killed a _deadly_ snake that had been about to _attack_ a student. She was utterly shocked when James hadn't even tried to fight the detentions (just as he hadn't bothered fighting the earlier detentions over the pixies); especially when she could see how much the punishment irritated the diminutive twelve year old.

The rest of the year had been a whirlwind of terror, confusion, and desperation. Impersonating teachers (poor Neville had ended up with rabbit accessories in a weird fluke), attacks taking place left and right, the professors and staff visibly frightened, Dumbledore sacked, Hagrid arrested, and a terrifying trip into the forest for answers. Through it all, James had remained calm and stoic; an island of stability in the storm of darkness and madness that gripped the castle. Hermione had found his unshakable demeanor reassuring and confusing; he was a year younger than she was, shouldn't he have been just as frightened as everyone else?

It was the memory of James chastising her and Neville about sneaking off into the forest alone that reminded her that James was no ordinary student. What normal student could claim to take regular trips into the forest because he was on friendly terms with the local centaur herd?

When she learned that James had found the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, Hermione didn't hesitate to put together a list of potential monsters that might be responsible for attacking everyone. She'd hoped the list of dangerous beasts that could and would kill without a second thought would discourage him from doing what she feared he intended to do. She hadn't really been surprised when he'd not been deterred in the least. In fact, for a moment, she thought she'd seen a gleam of anticipation flash through his eyes when she handed over said list; as if he had hoped to run into one or more of the creatures she'd listed.

She would later feel guilty after learning that the actual creature in the Chamber had been a Basilisk because she'd dismissed the basilisk as the monster due to the fact that the book had not once mentioned that a basilisk could petrify its victims (a revelation that would see her broadening her avenues of research and gradually ceasing to rely so heavily on the printed word).

A month after handing over that list, Hermione learned from Fred and George Weasley that James had entered the Chamber to rescue their little sister alone (after they'd been escorted back to the Common Room by a furious Professor McGonagall). She nearly strangled the identical and troublesome fourth years once she understood that they had let him go on alone. Learning that Lockhart had attempted to attack both them and James with the intent to erase their memories and that it had been the twins that had stopped the fraud had her redirecting her anger towards Lockhart.

The rest of the night had been spent fretting for James's wellbeing alongside Neville and the twins until a school wide announcement had been made roughly twenty-four hours after they'd been sequestered in their common rooms stating that the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets had been solved and the creature neutralized.

Hermione would not see hide or hair of James (or his familiar) after that bar a glimpse or two in the halls (the reclusive wizard had ditched classes and avoided the Great Hall) until the Leaving Feast. During those six weeks, rumors flew back and forth faster than any postal owl about what had happened and why James was disappearing so often in addition to those that speculated on who had been responsible for unleashing Slytherin's Monster on the school. The day after the Feast, when the rest of the students once again left for home, she noted again that James did not leave the school and even witnessed him getting waylaid and bustled back inside of the castle by Professor Snape when she saw the diminutive wizard attempting to sneak out at least once.

The summer after her second year, Hermione put together a complex chart and time line in an attempt to solve the mystery that was H. James Potter. The problem was that she knew so little about him despite the fact that he'd joined her and Neville in their nightly study sessions for the majority of the past two years. So she compiled hundreds of questions she'd like to one day ask James (when there was less of a chance of him biting her head off or rather when he was less prone to mercilessly prank her for prying) before turning her attention to her summer assignments and speculating what the next year would bring.

Their most recent year had turned out nothing like she'd expected it to and in Hermione's mind it had been an even bigger disaster than their second and first years combined.

It started with James distancing himself from Hermione and Neville from the moment the students returned to the castle right up until the disaster that was the confrontation that Hermione had initiated when she could no longer take being shunned by one of the two wizards that she'd considered a friend. Everything had gotten even more confusing at that point as James let slip he'd been kidnapped from his home and was being held hostage in the school, that he didn't even want to be at Hogwarts, that he'd leave the first chance he got, and that he had been attacked by a dementor over the summer.

Two years earlier, Hermione wouldn't have believed a word James had told them that day but Hermione was no longer the same girl she'd been two years earlier. Still, a small part of her had believed that most of James's ramblings that day had been the result of a severe concussion (he had hit his head pretty hard when he'd fallen after Neville had punched him). That hadn't stopped her from demanding that James let her and Neville help him find a way home despite the fact that James had flat out told her he didn't want to be their friend (because he wanted to leave and had no plans to return once he got out).

She had been given another clue to James's past during the aftermath of their confrontation; James had given her the name Kayaba Akihiko. (The other five names he'd mentioned were mostly ignored, if not forgotten, because he'd only given her partial names which would make it far too difficult to track down information on those individuals).

Things had returned to normal for the most part after that as the three of them fell back into familiar schedules though James still remained fairly withdrawn and he still took to vanishing down into the Chamber of Secrets every weekend without fail. He at least allowed Hermione and Neville to tag along and the shorter boy began relaxing around them just a touch as they worked together to improve the damp cavern with the help of James's excitable little elf.

And then a student had been attacked and the terror that had dogged her heels all during their second year returned once more. When there were no further attacks and no evidence that the attacker was still in the castle, everyone but James and the staff relaxed and Hermione and Neville remained tense because if James was still worried, then things were obviously not as safe as the staff pretended they were. The confrontation between Dumbledore and James that Hermione and Neville had witnessed had been surreal as Dumbledore accused James of treating life like a game and James accused Dumbledore of holding him prisoner.

Things only got worse as the school year progressed as James was attacked by a horde of dementors during the first Quidditch match of the year and James shut himself off once more (though he at least didn't shun her and Neville like he had at the start of the term). She'd been so worried about James's emotional distress that she'd completely forgotten to look up information about Kayaba Akihiko during the winter break. Not long after the students returned to the castle after the holidays, all of Hogwarts had been given an up close and personal glimpse into the hell that was H. James Potter's childhood during the Boggart Lesson from Hell (which is what Hermione silently referred to that day as ever since) just a few weeks into the new term.

The very public second confrontation between Dumbledore and James had been eye opening as well and Hermione suspected that there had been a number of similar such arguments between man and teen over the past two years that she hadn't been privy too. She had also been close enough to get a clear view of the scars that littered James's arms, neck, and back. Scars she hadn't even known were there as he never wore anything that would reveal them to the world and his ability to change clothes without undressing meant that no students ever saw him without a shirt on (not even his dorm mates).

There was a lull in disasters as they worked on mastering the Patronus Charm until James rushed off to rescue little Luna Lovegood at the end of March; a petit second year that would soon become a younger sister of sorts to the bushy haired witch. The month following Luna's rescue was one long nightmare as students were attacked seemingly every time she turned around. James grew frustrated and recklessly began hunting dementors in the forest; acting as if he thought it was his fault that students were being attacked.

Hermione had practically been a wreck during all of May as she constantly feared one of her friends (James still counted as one of them even if he would have denied being her friend in return) would be attacked next despite the attacks having stopped the moment the aurors turned up to patrol the halls. Knowing James was also tense and on edge during that time didn't help because it was as if he was simply waiting for the other shoe to drop. His paranoia would prove to be merited at the end of the month after the aurors had been called away from the castle.

That was when James had been tortured by the attacker who turned out to be a possessed student (by the same shade as the one that had possessed the one who'd opened the Chamber of Secrets the year before, though Hermione hadn't learned that tidbit until they'd visited James in the Infirmary); all because Professor Dawlish had kicked James out of the classroom so the rest of the class could review boggarts.

Learning that James had disappeared sometime after he'd been kicked out of class had frightened Hermione as her mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that he'd been attacked while he was out there all alone. The moment Professor Dawlish had ended class early in response to a disturbance taking place one floor above their new classroom, Hermione had dragged Neville with her to find the twins since she knew they had some way of tracking people inside of the castle and she wanted access to it to find James.

And found him they had; in the company of two professors and an unconscious student and he had been covered in blood and trembling like a leaf. James's flippant remark about not shattering (a clear reference to the fact that dead things tended to explode into crystal shards before vanishing completely around the diminutive wizard) made Hermione want to hex the snot out of him while the crooked grin he had given her made her heart flutter unexpectedly. It was at that point that they learned that James had been tortured (though he was far more concerned with Hedwig's health than his own) and that he'd fought back and subdued his attacker after that.

They had another week of peace before James was once again attacked by a horde of dementors during the final Quidditch match. She was one of the few people in the stands that hadn't been surprised to witness James destroy a few dementors (well more like a few dozen) since she was one of the handful of people that had known he could kill the things since he'd saved Luna a few months earlier. She had, on the other hand, been blown away by the sheer level of power he'd displayed as he destroyed most of the attacking demons with what appeared to be a single wandless spell.

That was after the heart stopping display of aerial acrobatics that James and Diggory had engaged in during the middle of the long game. Watching the diminutive wizard dance across the sky with grace made Hermione wished she wasn't terrified of flying as her mind was filled with visions of dancing in James's arms on top of the clouds with the setting sun painting the clouds crimson. There was no doubt in anyone's mind after that display that H. James Potter could fly. Hermione was almost willing to believe that he could fly without his broom after watching him defy gravity and logic with some of his stunts.

The last week of term passed by in a blur and Hermione once again tied with Harry for the top spot in their year with Neville claiming the fifth spot (beating out one of the Ravenclaws by three points). Before Hermione knew it and far before she was ready, she had packed her trunk and left the castle for home while James was held back for the third year in a row. Neville silently stuck to her side; her first friend also deep in thought.

During the train ride home, Hermione poked and prodded the two memories of the confrontations she'd witnessed between Dumbledore and James; focusing first on the way the headmaster castigated James for treating life as a game since she couldn't for the life of her see one instance where her fellow second year had treated anything like a joke (not counting the various pranks he pulled on those that annoyed him and even then he rarely laughed at those he pranked). She couldn't help but feel that she was still missing a huge piece of the puzzle that was H. James Potter.

It was at that point that Hermione remembered the name that James had dropped back at the beginning of the year; Kayaba Akihiko.

It only took her a moment to realize that there was something familiar about the name Kayaba Akihiko that she hadn't noticed when James first mentioned the name simply because there had been a hundred other things on her mind at the time. It wasn't until the Hogwarts Express pulled to a stop at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters within King's Cross Station that Hermione recalled exactly where she'd heard the name Kayaba Akihiko or more accurately, the slightly westernized name of Akihiko Kayaba.

The fourteen year old witch sat frozen in her seat as her mind supplied her with memories of each and every terrible news report she'd seen about the ten thousand people that Akihiko Kayaba had trapped in the virtual role playing game he'd helped design; Sword Art Online. Over the course of a two year period, close to four thousand people had been murdered by the Nerve Gear (which Mr. Kayaba had also had a hand in designing) while the other six thousand plus had been trapped inside their minds within the game with death hanging over their heads for the entirety of those same two years.

Hermione wasn't much of a gamer but even she knew that it took a lot of practice to be good enough to clear the various challenges that most adventure games forced a player to face. Your character's repeated death was almost guaranteed until you learned to how to beat the program at its own game. She didn't know if she could ever comprehend the sheer level of terror James must have experienced knowing that a single decision could mean the difference between life and death; if he had truly been one of the ten thousand individuals trapped inside of the game.

She'd had a brief glimpse the night she'd faced the troll, throughout her second year never knowing when Slytherin's monster would next attack, and again this past year but somehow she wasn't certain the terrors she'd experienced here and there over the course of the past three years could compare to two years of living with the knowledge that each day you woke up could be the day you die if you made a single mistake or poor decision or simply had a moment of bad luck.

At the same time, Hermione found it hard to believe that James had been trapped with the other players.

First of all, he would have only been about nine when the game first came out and she knew that there had been an age restriction placed on the equipment necessary to experience FullDive. Secondly, all of the news reports had placed all ten thousand victims in Japan (though she supposed that James _could_ have been living in Japan at the time). And thirdly, it was a known fact that magic and technology clashed and magicals that encountered computers or other digital devices tended to disrupt or destroy any device the moment their magic brushed up against an active device. Hermione herself had shorted out dozens of MP3 players, IPods, handheld gaming devices, cell phones, and a DVD player or two when she'd been younger; something that had confused and annoyed her parents for years.

And yet, Hermione couldn't deny the gut feeling she had that she was on the right track based upon what little she'd learned about James over the last three years. Knowing that, Dumbledore's accusations of James treating life like a _game_ suddenly made more sense.

Then there was the fact that now that she thought about it, the way James twisted his magic to do things like store his school supplies and change his clothes was similar to how she knew game menus worked. The way the pixies had shattered the day that James had killed them had been another clue she hadn't recognized at the time, as was the computer-like window that appeared each time one of the pixies had been destroyed. It had all been reminiscent of any on-line or computerized RPG but Hermione hadn't realized it at the time because she hadn't really been all that into playing games when she could bury her nose in a book instead.

Hermione could also see why James might believe he was still trapped in a game if he'd gone straight from the virtual world of Sword Art Online to a magical world that he'd had no prior knowledge of before waking up inside of the castle surrounded by strangers. That his magic had become twisted by his experiences was obvious, no other witch or wizard had a personalized Player's Menu to help them change their clothes or keep track of their belongings; something that probably only confused him further.

All of that was trivial though when compared to the underlying grief and fear she'd sensed tearing at James as he'd spoken of not even knowing whether any of the people he'd grown close to during the game were still alive more than once during the past year. That pain had paled in comparison to the burning rage she'd glimpsed when he'd confronted Dumbledore after the Boggart Lesson from Hell after the Headmaster had insinuated that James had called up that bone creature as some kind of joke and labeled the terrifying creature as a figment of James's imagination.

As Hermione finally rose to her feet to exit the Hogwarts Express, she silently swore that she would do all she could to help James find his missing friends. And since James couldn't leave the castle in order to find the truth for himself (she and Neville had both tried everything they could to get him out of there for the current summer break), it was up to her to bring closure to her friend (even if he didn't yet see her that way).

Hermione would spend the rest of June, all of July, and almost all of August holed up in the public library collecting every last bit of information on Sword Art Online that she could get her hands on and making copies of everything for James. It wasn't until the twenty-fifth of August that she found her first potential lead in her search for James's friends in the form of a single name; Kazuto Kirigaya. It took her five days and close to a hundred rough drafts to compose a letter to the man, taking care not to sound threatening, to not make it look like she'd lost her mind, and most importantly, to not give away too much information least the man prove to be a threat to James.

She mailed the letter through the muggle post on August thirty-first and prayed she was on the right track; a desperate fear that James was reaching his breaking point (based upon how difficult the past year had been for her friend) driving her onward despite the risks she was ultimately taking in contacting a perfect stranger.

* * *

**Game Terminology:**

FullDive – the use of technology to fully immerse one's conscience in a virtual reality  
Nerve Gear – equipment created by Kayaba Akihiko (Argus); allows the user to enter FullDive  
NERDLES – **Ner**ve **D**irect **L**inkage **E**nvironment **S**ystem (a surgically implanted chip that allows the FullDive system to interface with the brain – the surgically implanted part may or may not be canon as it was something I thought seemed more logical than it just being part of the interface helmet)  
RPG – **R**oll **P**laying **G**ame  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

* * *

**AN:** _Before anyone asks… yes, I am aware that Hermione could have approached Kikuoka Seijirou for information on the survivors of SAO but her reasoning (or rather my reasoning) for her not doing so was because of the Statute of Secrecy. She had no way of knowing whether or not an official would have knowledge of the magical world and getting a government agency involved could have potentially created far more problems in her mind. _

_If Kazuto's name had not been released in one or more newspaper articles, she may have been forced to go through the SAO Case Victims Rescue Force and Seijirou in the end. There's also the fact that her contacting Kirito furthered my plot but that wasn't the only reason I had her write to him. =) ~ Jenn_

**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	25. Reality

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Five: Reality

_Friday, September 6, 2024 4:15 PM_

Eighteen (soon to be nineteen) year old Kirigaya Kazuto sighed as he walked through the door into the silent house; the rest of his family had headed to Yokohama for the weekend as Kirigaya Suguha (his adopted sister and cousin) had a Kendo Tournament she was participating in. Kazuto had originally intended to go with the rest of the family but had to change his plans at the last minute due to an unavoidable class project that had been assigned just a couple of days earlier. Suguha had been disappointed but understanding and accepting instead of resentful (as she had been five years earlier when Kazuto always bowed out of watching her compete) because he'd really made an effort to be there for her over the past three years.

Kazuto was not the same person he'd been five years earlier. The two years he'd spent trapped inside the world of Sword Art Online had really changed Kazuto. As had his experiences with ALfheim Online, Gun Gale Online, and Project Alicization during the two years following the SAO debacle. There had been a lot of unpleasantness involved in all of that and he knew that few people could have gone through what he'd been through and come out unchanged. Even now he still struggled to deal with everything that happened from time to time.

Despite the bad experiences he'd had over the past five years, Kazuto treasured the memories he'd made during that time and the precious people he'd met and befriended. The trials he'd faced alongside those people had taught him how to live again. A few prime examples were Yuuki Asuna (his real life fiancée and in-game wife), Mills Andrew Gilbert or Gil as he preferred to be called (aka Agil), Shinozaki Rika (aka Lisbeth), Ayano Keiko (aka Silica), Tsuboi Ryoutarou (aka Klein), and Asada Shino (aka Sinon); all of whom bar Shino had been trapped within SAO with him.

There are others he knew and spoke to occasionally (including some that he'd met in ALO and GGO, like Shino) but those six were the ones he saw most frequently. That wasn't including those that had died over last the five years but it still hurt to think of think of those that had been lost; either through mistakes made in SAO (the members of the Black Cat of the Full Moon Guild), due to unfortunate circumstances (the terminally ill Konno Yuuki), or just plain missing (the ever stubborn Dragon Slayer James the Reckless – as Ryoutarou had dubbed him).

Toeing off his shoes, Kazuto padded further into the house to deposit his things in his room. He then sat down to check his e-mail and took several minutes to reply to those that needed his immediate attention before he headed downstairs to grab himself something for supper. On his way into the kitchen, he picked up the small pile of letters that someone (most likely Suguha or his adopted mother – who was also his biological aunt) had left on the hall table for him. He rifled through the half a dozen envelopes taking note of the senders' addresses only to pause in confusion when he came to a name he didn't recognize with an out of country address.

_Hermione Granger  
42 St. Peters Court  
Canterbury, Kent CT1 2RX  
United Kingdom_

Frowning, Kazuto dropped the rest of his mail on the kitchen table and continued to inspect the one from the U.K. as he put on a kettle of water for tea. He continued searching his memory for any reason for someone outside of Japan to be writing to him but he kept drawing a blank. A niggling suspicion that he was overlooking something obvious kept him from tossing the letter out unopened but it was the gut feeling that the letter would cause him no end of trouble that prevented him from opening it without giving the matter due consideration first.

The screaming of the tea kettle made Kazuto jump as he'd completely forgotten about the water he'd been heating on the stove. Tucking the mysterious letter into his shirt pocket, the teen quickly set about making a cup of tea before raiding the refrigerator for leftovers to heat up. He then sat down at the table and began eating. After a couple of bites, he pulled the letter back out and dropped it on the table beside his plate where he stared at it through the rest of the meal. It wasn't until he finished eating, drank the last of his tea, and washed his dishes that he came to the conclusion that he would at least see why this Hermione Granger person was writing to him.

Pinching the top corner of the left side between his thumb and index finger, Kazuto ripped the envelope open and pulled out a sheet of thick, yellowed parchment that had been folded into thirds. The strangeness of receiving a letter written on actual parchment gave Kazuto pause for a moment before he pushed the oddness out of his mind and unfolded the letter. His eyebrows steadily made their way up his forehead as he read through the letter and he gave a start when he finally reached what he assumed was the crux of the matter towards the middle of the note. His hand crushed the letter just seconds later as he bolted towards his room without bothering to finish reading the rest of the letter as a sense of urgency filled him.

His fingers were flying across the keyboard before he even finished sitting down at his computer as he opened his e-mail and sent an urgent note to Gil, Ryoutarou, Asuna, and Rika asking them to make arrangements to meet him at Gil's restaurant slash pub (the Dicey Café) at closing time on Sunday. He would have liked to meet with them sooner but he had a class project to complete first, though he'd have a difficult time concentrating for the rest of the weekend as the words of the letter constantly burned through his mind.

* * *

_Sunday, September 10, 2023 8:56 PM_

Kazuto slipped in through the front entrance of the Dicey Café and glanced around at the small handful of customers that were finishing up their meals or nursing a final glass of alcohol in order to see if any of the others (aside from Gil, who owned the place) had yet arrived. A small smile flashed across his face when he saw his longtime girlfriend and fiancée waving to him from one of the newly installed booths near the back of the small café and he hurried across the room to join her. Asuna's beauty never failed to stir Kazuto's heart each time he saw her but it was her inner strength and purity of heart that had drawn him to her; she'd been one of players that had unflinchingly fought on the front lines during the SAO ordeal.

"_Hey,_" Kazuto greeted softly as he sat down next to his fiancée.

"_Hi,_" Asuna greeted in response. "_When are you going to tell me what this is all about?_"

"_Soon, I promise. I don't want to have to repeat it more than once, so as soon as everyone is here I'll explain._"

"_Why didn't you just tell everyone in the e-mail you sent?_"

"_Because it's far more complicated than that and you have to see it to believe it._"

"_Still as mysterious as ever, eh, buddy?_" Ryoutarou demanded as he slapped Kazuto on the back before he sat down across from the couple. "_Evening, Asuna._"

"_Who's being mysterious?_" Rika inquired as she pulled Ryoutarou out of her way so she could slide into the booth to sit next to Asuna. "_Hello, Asuna. Kazuto._"

"_Hello to you too, Rika,_" Ryoutarou muttered with a pout over being left out of her greeting and being displaced from his seat. When she just stuck her tongue out at him in response, he dropped down onto the bench beside Kazuto with a soft, fond huff of exasperation.

"_So what's with all of the cloak and dagger stuff?_" Rika asked after a few minutes. "_I mean, I like mysteries just as much as the next person but it's not like you to be so cryptic Kazuto-kun._"

"_I'll explain once Gil is finished closing up for the day,_" Kazuto replied as he reached his free hand into his pocket and fingered the now worn piece of parchment he'd been reading and rereading for the past two days whenever he wasn't working on his class project or scouring the internet for information. "_It's already five after nine, so it shouldn't be too much longer._"

Gil's wife, a no-nonsense woman with a kind heart named Mayumi, delivered four coffees to their table along with a platter of assorted deserts a heartbeat later and let them know that Gil would join them in about ten minutes. Kazuto thanked her as she walked away and settled back against the booth as he listened to the other three amicably catching up with one another as it had been a while since the last time they'd all gotten together. Normally, Kazuto would have joined in the conversation but his mind was firmly on another individual. The one friend that none of them had had any luck in tracking down during the past three years, though Gil had been the most diligent in searching since the man had been closest to individual in question.

"_What's going on, Kazuto?_" Gil demanded tiredly as he joined them several minutes later with his own cup of coffee; the man's usual friendliness worn down by a long day of work coupled with barely suppressed frustration and worry over the lack of information about their missing friend.

"_A possible lead on what happened to James,_" Kazuto confessed as he brought out the letter he'd been sent and leaned forward to pass it to Gil; all four of the others starting a bit as mentioning their missing friend's name had become something of a taboo around the older black man at some point in the past year and a half of searching for the missing child. "_I would have said something sooner or even brought you the letter sooner but I had a project I couldn't get out of for class and I wanted to research the person who sent it in case it was a hoax. I found nothing; not even a whisper. So, I don't know if the source can be trusted or not._"

"_Read it out loud,_" Ryoutarou half asked and half demanded as Gil simply stared at the worn and folded scrap of processed sheepskin in his hands while both ladies present leaned forward and stared at the letter as if they could discern its contents with just a glance.

Gil nodded shakily as he unfolded the letter and began reading aloud, his rich voice thick with emotion.

_Dear Mr. Kirigaya,_

_I am certain that you are probably more than a little confused as to why a perfect  
stranger from halfway around the world might be contacting you but I am hoping  
that you might be able to help me. I have spent the past two and a half months  
diligently researching the Sword Art Online incident from a few years back in order  
to help a friend and your name was the only name, aside from the deceased  
Akihiko Kayaba, I could find that was linked to Sword Art Online. _

_I realize that you might not wish to be reminded of your ordeal as one of the ten  
thousand individuals that had been virtually kidnapped by Mr. Kayaba and for that  
I will apologize in advance since it is not my intent to dredge up painful memories. _

_However, I am determined to help the friend I mentioned earlier find closure  
because I fear it won't be much longer before he breaks under the weight of the  
emotions he keeps bottled up inside. And I don't think anyone else can see just  
how much he is suffering underneath the emotionless façade he wears in front  
of others. _

_You are probably wondering what my friend's state of mind has to do with you or  
your experiences in Sword Art Online and in truth the only thing I believe links the  
two of you together is that you are both survivors of the Death Game; though I have  
yet to confront my friend for confirmation of that. I have no idea whether or not you  
personally met my friend during the ordeal or if you would know the names of the  
five people he interacted with but it is my hope that if his name means nothing to  
you that you can at least point me in the direction of someone that I could contact in  
order to find one of those individuals. _

_My friend's name is Harry James Potter but he prefers to be addressed as James  
and I once heard him refer to himself as Dragon Slayer James the Reckless. The  
individuals that I am trying to help him find are Agil, Klein, Lisbeth, Asuna, and  
Kirito. I don't know if any of those names are those players' real names but those  
were the only names James knew those individuals by. He's also certain that both  
Asuna and Kirito died in the final minutes of the game and fears that all three of  
the others died as well. _

_I'd greatly appreciate any help you are willing to offer in tracking down any one of  
those individuals, even if it is just a confirmation of their deaths. I am praying that  
you can at least help me find the man known as Agil; someone James has repeatedly  
referred to as a father figure during the three years that I've known him, as I think  
he might be the only one that can help my friend. You see, due to certain things that  
I am not allowed to speak of; James is convinced that he is still trapped within a  
virtual reality. _

_It doesn't help that he has essentially become a prisoner at the boarding school we  
both attend for reasons known only to the headmaster of the school. I suspect they  
are worried about his apparent belief that life is a game and wish to protect him  
from those that would harm him. I don't know why he isn't even allowed to leave  
for the summer and winter holidays though and no one ever speaks of his family. _

_I know my story seems rather far fetched but I am prohibited from speaking about  
a good portion of what is happening unless you already know about it. I am also  
leery of giving you too many details about my friend because I have no idea if you  
held any grudges against him for things that might have happened during the  
Sword Art Online ordeal. I do hope that is not the case but since I know next to  
nothing about you and even less about what James experienced in the game, I  
can't be too careful._

_Any help you are willing to provide would be greatly appreciated._

_Sincerely,  
Hermione Granger_

"_Do you think that letter might be the real deal? Where was she from, anyway?_" Asuna asked as soon as Gil fell silent and lowered the letter. "_And why would she contact you instead of contacting_ _Kikuoka Seijirou at the SAO Case Victims Rescue Force? Or did she contact him as well?_"

"_The address on the envelope placed her in the United Kingdom; specifically in Kent, England,_" Kazuto answered as he pulled out the envelope, set it on the table, and tapped the return address. "_I couldn't find any information on a Hermione Granger through the internet but that could be because she's most likely a minor given that she's supposedly attending a boarding school with James, who would be fourteen by now. I did, however, find a listing for a Doctor M. Granger and a Doctor A. Granger who run a private dental clinic in Dover, Kent; which is not that far from Canterbury._"

"_And I don't know if she contacted Seijirou-san or not yet; I sent him a couple of messages over the weekend but he hasn't gotten back to me yet. Hopefully, he will get back to me tomorrow. It's possible that she did contact him and that he hadn't been able to help because there are no records of James existing. Not even Yui could find any information about him within the Cardinal System but she had no trouble looking up information on the other nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine players._"

"_I also have two theories as to why Granger-chan had contacted me. First, is as she said, my name is one of the few that were ever publicly associated with SAO aside from the obituaries of the deceased and a handful of those who worked with Kayaba. And second, I suspect she might not want to involve an official due to her claim that there are things she can't talk about. The second one only really applies if she avoided contacting Seijirou-san though._"

"_She also might be worried about repercussions from whoever it is that is keeping James locked up at the school,_" Asuna added thoughtfully as she frowned into her cup. "_After all, an official inquiry would potentially draw unwanted attention to the situation._"

"_The Ken no Sekai software never hit the world-wide market; so how could someone in England have gotten a hold of the software?_" Ryoutarou demanded with a frown.

"_Just because he is potentially in the United Kingdom now, doesn't mean that he was there five years ago,_" Rika pointed out logically as she tore apart the half eaten piece of anpan on her plate. "_His family or the people that are reportedly keeping him locked up at school could have transferred him out of the country after he'd been caught up in the game or immediately after the game ended._"

"_Six weeks into the game, James was caught up in a system glitch that scrubbed his adult avatar after he'd managed to avoid being ousted as a kid on the first day of the game,_" Kazuto added as he took a drink of his coffee and grimaced at the bitter taste of the now cold drink. "_There is a small chance that that glitch could have been caused by his body being transferred between Japan and the UK; if the proper precautions were taken at the time. I just can't think of any logical reason for him to have been moved out of the country at the time though._"

"_What do you think, Gil?_" Asuna asked as she glanced over at the older black man who had not said a single word since he'd finished reading the letter.

"_I don't know what to think. I have been hoping, praying, and searching for even the tiniest of clues as to James's whereabouts for almost three years now,_" Gil stated after a few minutes. "_I can't tell you the number of times I cursed the stubborn gaki for not giving out even the smallest of hints as to who he lived with and where they lived. Aside from the fact that he lived with his aunt, uncle, and cousin and that they disliked him enough to verbally, mentally, and emotionally abuse him; he never gave me anything to work with. He was convinced that his body had been stuffed in a closet and left to die and yet he didn't care because as far as he was concerned, Aincrad was his home._"

"_He didn't just see Aincrad as home; he loved that world with his entire soul,_" Rika interjected sadly. "_He found magic in every nook and cranny on every floor and sought to share it with all of us. Even when he was facing off against monsters like the Frost Dragon, he saw the beauty in the beast and in the fight and he often lamented over the fact that the designers of the monsters chose to force the players to destroy the wonders that had been created._"

"_That didn't stop him from facing off against those same wonders and shattering them at every opportunity,_" Ryoutarou snorted as he folded his arms and leaned back against the booth. "_Little snot was pleased as punch when I dubbed him Dragon Slayer James the Reckless after I first met him._"

"_Why do you think he believes that Kazuto and I died at the end of the game?_" Asuna wondered as she shivered over the memory of what had happened on the day Aincrad fell before she leaned into Kazuto's side.

"_He'd witnessed the end of Kazuto's fight against Kayaba and saw both of you shatter. He was utterly devastated and screaming for you two to come back. Hell, all of us believed the two of you were dead right up until we saw Kazuto's picture in the paper,_" Ryoutarou replied with a frown as he shifted uncomfortably on his seat. "_If James thinks he's trapped in another game on another server and he's locked up at some school for his own safety, then there's a good chance that the details of everything that happened afterwards have been kept from him as well._"

"_So how are we going to find out whether this girl is the real deal or not?_" Rika asked as she reached forward to tap the letter that Gil hadn't yet released.

"_I will send her a reply,_" Gil stated as he collected the envelope with the girl's address on it. "_There are a number of questions that I can ask her that she'd only know the answers to if she has had contact with James and is his friend like she claims to be. Do you need this back, or can I keep it for now?_"

"_Go ahead and keep it,_" Kazuto replied in response to Gil's desire to hold onto the letter. "_I wrote down the girl's name and address in case I needed it later; figuring you'd want to hold onto the original. You'll let us know when she responds back to your letter?_"

"_Yes._"

"_Good. Let me know if you need anything and if you decide to take a trip out to England to investigate in person, let me know because I'd like to go with you,_" Kazuto added as everyone began preparing to leave; their impromptu meeting finished now that a plan of action had been decided upon.

"_Count me in as well; I owe the little gaki a good ribbing or two for allowing himself to be thrown off the edge of the platform like a rookie gamer during the fight against the Skull Reaper,_" Ryoutarou added with a slightly forced grin.

"_Are we going to get Kikuoka Seijirou involved beyond determining whether or not Granger-san contacted him?_" Asuna inquired as the group began migrating towards the door.

"_It is probably best to wait and see how things go before we get him involved,_" Gil insisted as he tucked the worn parchment into the envelope and stuck it in his pocket. "_Sending him in before we know what we're dealing with may see our only lead on James's whereabouts vanishing if the girl gets spooked due to his involvement._"

Nothing more was said as the group split up to go their different ways; all five of them hoping and praying that they finally had a real chance of finding their missing friend.

* * *

It would take Gil two days to write and send a reply to Miss Granger's letter; the man taking care to word his questions carefully so as not to upset the girl or her parents as she was currently their only potential lead in finding James. He had also wanted to wait until Kazuto had heard back from Kikuoka Seijirou since the man's involvement would make a big difference in how they went about following up on the potential lead they had been given. Once the letter was finished and it had been determined that Miss Granger had not contacted the SAO Case Victims Rescue Force in her search for answers, the letter was sent on its way.

All that remained was to wait for the girl's next letter. Based upon the date stamp on the envelope, Gil knew it would take at least eight days for his letter to reach its destination and at least another eight days for her response to reach him with anywhere from two to five days in between to allow for her to write out her reply. That meant that it would be at least eighteen days before he could expect a response but most likely closer to a full four weeks before he got a reply.

His estimates would be mostly correct minus one little detail…

Hermione Granger's overworked parents weren't aware of the importance of the letter that arrived for their daughter on September nineteenth from a correspondent in Japan. So instead of forwarding the letter to her at school, they simply placed it on her desk like they normally did during the school year and there it would stay until about eight and a half months later when the school year finally ended as Hermione would stay at the castle during the winter and spring holidays as she had during her second year.

After three months with no reply, Gil, Kazuto, Asuna, Rika, and Ryoutarou would begin making plans to fly out to England in May (all of them had prior obligations they needed to deal with before they could take off halfway around the world). They planned to stay in the United kingdom for at least six months (with the hopes that that would be enough time to get the answers they needed in order to find James) with the knowledge that if the lead didn't pan out, they could always head home sooner.

And while the five of them had been through quite a bit together since they'd first been trapped in the world of Ken no Sekai, not a single one of them was prepared for the real life world of Magic and Madness that they would soon find themselves immersed in.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Ken no Sekai – Sword Art Online

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

**Notes: **

Hermione's address – I picked a fairly random number and street for the Granger family to live on and placed them in Canterbury, Kent on a whim since her origins are not known through the books. There are several FanFics that place her down in Crawley but I didn't want to follow that trend. I think I got the format for the mailing address correct but it is entirely possible that I am wrong; which I'm not too worried about since the address is only important for this story. Any resemblance to an actual address is pure coincidence.

Hermione's Letter – Some of you may have noticed that I made Hermione sound very mature in her letter and that is because at the time she wrote the letter she was almost fifteen years old, she has on many occasions demonstrated that she is very mature for her age, and she took her time writing that letter because she needed Kazuto to take her request seriously and not dismiss it as a cruel or childish prank.

* * *

**AN:** _And now you have a vague idea of what everyone else from SAO has been doing while Harry was lost in MaM and that they've been diligently searching for the missing James. I know there were a few people hoping that James would be able to take part in the ALO, GGO, or Project Alicization but at the time I first wrote this out, I hadn't really known all that much about GGO and Alicization since I've been following the anime rather than the light novels. That's also the reason why I didn't go into detail of what had happened during those arcs._

_As far as this story goes, the events that took place in ALO, GGO, and the Underworld (Project Alicization) all followed canon bar the fact that they've been searching for James. The reasons why no trace of James had been found (both in the system by Yui and in reality by Kikuoka Seijirou) will be explained within the story in later chapters. I'm sure most of you are kind of sick of hearing me say that but that's just the way this story's plot unfolded as I wrote the story. _

_I know there were a couple people that had hoped I'd have a magical solution to saving Yuuki but I hadn't seen the Mother's Rosario arc until long after this had been written out. And I am not ashamed to say I bawled my eyes out after I did see it. Her story was so touching and heartbreaking. *sniffles* ~ Jenn_

**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	26. Transition

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Six: Transition

_Wednesday, August 28, 2024 4:25 PM_

Harry was nearly bowled over by an excited Sirius Black in dog form when his virtual godfather enthusiastically greeted him the moment he stepped out of the tunnel network into what he'd begun to silently refer to as the Garden Chamber (what used to be the main chamber of the Chamber of Secrets). Hedwig gave off a hissing complaint over the rough greeting as she peeled herself off of her perch on the teen's shoulders and flew off in search of a more stable perch for the time being. Harry flicked the overexcited dog on the nose in exasperation.

"Ouch, don't do _that_!" Sirius whined as he transformed back to his human self and grabbed hold of his nose as he stared up at Harry from where he was now seated on the floor.

"Don't jump on me then, mutt," Harry pointedly threw back. "Or I might suddenly develop a need to carry a roll of newspaper on me in an effort to train you to behave."

"You've been spending far too much time with Moony if you are threatening me with the newspaper now," Sirius deadpanned with a slight scowl that looked more like a pout.

"That makes the two of you even; since he thinks I've been spending far too much time around you."

"I am not a bad influence!"

"Me thinks you doth protest too much, Padfoot," Remus dryly quipped as he joined the two of them.

"No one asked the peanut gallery."

"Did the two of you call me back here just so you could have an audience while you bicker back and forth like an old married couple or did you pull me away from the herd for a reason aside from picking up supplies from Diagon Alley?"

"Well getting your supplies for the new school year is important and we're cutting it really close as it is," Sirius immediately defended as he scrambled up off the ground. "And we figured you would enjoy a chance to get out of here again for at least a few hours."

A pained expression crossed Harry's face for the briefest of moments as his godfather's words pierced his heart as they reminded him that the forest he'd been frolicking through just hours earlier was still part of the fancy prison he'd been locked up inside of for the last three years. He then shoved his emotions behind his usual blank mask as he blandly asked, "Are we leaving now or are we going first thing in the morning?"

"We'd originally planned to spend the afternoon there but you got back later than expected, so we'll head out first thing in the morning and spend the entire day in the Alley wandering around," Remus replied while Sirius retreated behind a mask of his own when the older wizard immediately picked up on the fact that he'd caused Harry pain due to his careless words.

"You know, if you really wanted to get your things tonight we could head out now," Sirius suggested suddenly as his mood did an abrupt one eighty. "And if the shops just happened to close for the night before we finished, well we'd just have to rough it for the night and see if ole Tom at the Leaky Cauldron has a room we can borrow for the evening."

"Albus did give us permission to take you from the castle today," Remus added as he quickly cottoned onto Sirius's spur of the moment plan. "And of course, we'll have to make time to grab us a bite of supper since we're running so late right now and won't have time to eat before we go."

"The bearded codger isn't going to let us waltz out the front door this late," Harry pointed out with a slight scowl as he glanced upwards as if he could spot Dumbledore through the tons of rock separating the Garden Chamber from the castle in order to glare at the NPC.

"Good thing he provided us with a pair of preset portkeys that are password activated for our traveling convenience then, right?" Sirius crowed as he pulled a lurid orange and purple sock out of his pocket.

"What the hell did you eat to vomit that thing up, Padfoot?" Harry demanded as he felt his eyes begin to burn from the sheer brightness of the clashing colors.

"Two garden gnomes, a pixie, and three pounds of wool," Remus answered with a straight face.

Harry stared at the man blankly for half a minute before he began snickering as he pictured his virtual godfather chowing down on a bunch of fuzzy wool right off the sheep while pixies played tug of war with the gnomes. Both older men joined him a second later and the tenseness that had suffused the room the moment Harry's mood had plummeted vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. The teen then whistled for Hedwig as all three of the wizards grabbed hold of the sock.

"Traveling by portkey isn't all that pleasant," Remus explained as they waited for Hedwig to settle herself back on Harry's shoulders before activating the portkey. "All you have to remember is three simple things; don't fight the pull of the magic when the portkey activates, don't tense up, and don't panic. If you remember that, you'll be deposited on your feet as soon as we reach our destination. If you forget, you'll end up sprawled all over the ground because the magic behind the transportation spell can get thrown off balance easily by the state of your magic which reflects your emotions as well as your physical state."

"Sounds simple enough, I suppose. It's not going to squash me flat, stuff me through a microscopic straw, and stretch me out between here and London as it transports us, is it?"

"Nah, it's just going to spin you around super fast and make you feel like you're going to throw your stomach up along with everything you've eaten for the last three years," Sirius hurried to assure him.

"What!?" Harry demanded just as Remus spoke the password and activated the portkey.

Harry felt something hook him through the belly button before he was pulled forward into a violent cyclone. He panicked at first until he recalled what Remus had told him and he had to force himself to relax. The moment he did, the spinning sensation smoothed out and he barely felt the barest of breezing rushing past him to give the impression that he was traveling exceedingly fast. The crestfallen look on Sirius's face when Harry landed gracefully on his feet instead of sprawling on the ground let the pint sized teen know that Sirius had purposefully knocked him off balance in order to prank him. Oh, he was so going to prank the old dog in return first chance he got.

"Do we need to visit the bank first so you can grab a bit of pocket change?" Remus asked as the three of them headed into the hidden shopping district after they'd taken a moment to straighten up their clothes.

"Will I need to purchase anything that costs more than one thousand, five hundred, seventy-three galleons, eight sickles, and twelve knuts?" Harry asked after quickly tallying up how much money he had on hand based on what he had total in his Wallet.

"Why the hell are you carrying around that much money?" Sirius hissed as he glanced around to see if anyone had overheard Harry's reply.

"I get money in the drops each time I defeat a monster; the amount of money I receive is directly related to the difficulty level of the monster defeated. Most drops earn me sickles and knuts but I've also earned galleons on those drops from the higher level monsters; such as the Dementors and the Basilisk. That's not even counting everything I pulled from the Chamber of Secrets or the Items that I sold to the goblins the last time you brought me to Diagon Alley."

"I never knew you got money when you killed the various dark creatures you encountered. I'm not even sure how that would even work; I mean where does the money come from? Though I suppose that isn't all that important right now. Just out of curiosity though; how much have you earned over the last three years that way?"

"Well, I started out with around one thousand of each coin the first time I visited the bank and spent roughly five hundred and sixty galleons on school supplies on my first trip."

"What did you buy? Half the alley?"

"I bought quality equipment, a bunch of extra books, and spent close to four hundred on beautiful and her supplies. I also bought extras of those supplies that would be used more often than others; like parchment, ink, quills, potion ingredients, and several extra pairs of gloves since my trap wires are rather hard on my protective gear. Anyway, after I finished shopping I had less than five hundred galleons left. So I figure I've earned at least twenty-two hundred galleons over the last three years if I count the money that Dobby spent to purchase everything he needed to clean up and remodel the Chamber and what I spent on school supplies the past two summers."

"Impressive. Why haven't you put any of that money in your vault?"

"My vault is full from the money I earned through the sale of Slytherin's treasure and I dislike going to the bank; the goblins are creepy and they stared at me funny the two times I did enter the bank."

"Enough chit-chat; you're giving me a headache," Sirius imperiously declared as he withdrew Harry's supply list for the year from his pocket. "What did you want to pick up first?"

"Live rats for Hedwig, and no you can't steal them from her, and then books."

"You'll also need to purchase a set of dress robes," Remus interjected as he plucked the list out of Sirius's hands even as they began gravitating towards the Magical Menagerie to get the rats. "Might be best to order those first and then we can pick them up tomorrow before we head back to the castle."

"That's fine," Harry agreed before he continued past the pet store towards the robe shop that he hadn't visited since his first year at Hogwarts.

Twenty minutes later, Harry was wearing a cold, blank look as he stared at the wall in Madam Malkin's Robes For All Occasions as Madam Malkin pinned the hem of the dark green dress robes with gold trim he was currently wearing. He hadn't originally been wearing his emotionless mask when he first entered the shop and the owner of the store hadn't been the original witch helping him pick out his dress robes but his mood had dropped rapidly the moment he'd stepped up on the stool. The employee that had been measuring him had been the same witch that had measured him the first time he'd come to the shop.

And she had apparently memorized Harry's measurements because from the moment he'd stepped onto that stool she spoke of nothing but how he'd not grown so much as a hairsbreadth over the last five years (not that the woman knew it had been quite that long).

Now, Harry was not a vain person; looks weren't all that big a deal to him so long as no one was openly staring at his scars (one reason why he hid most of them). But he absolutely hated it when the NPCs in this game drew attention to his lack of growth. He didn't mind being short (he was used to people towering over him) but it hurt to be reminded that he was still a prisoner inside of a virtual reality. The loud exclamations and multiple checks with the measuring tape had stirred his anger (which had only grown harder to control after the painful ordeal that had been his third year) to the point that the mirrors spread throughout the shop began cracking beneath the unseen weight of his magic that had been stirred by his emotions.

Madam Malkin had come rushing in from the back with her wand drawn expecting a fight only to stop and stare at the angry young wizard and her oblivious employee for a full minute before she quickly shooed the other witch to the back room to take an inventory while she took the woman's place and immediately distracted Harry by asking him what kind of robes he was looking to purchase. He'd worn the blank mask ever since and spoke in a quiet clipped tone when answering questions as he slowly regained control of his anger and consequently his magic. Remus in the mean time had gone around the shop and repaired each and every mirror that had been cracked.

"All done, dearie," Madam Malkin announced a moment later as she straightened up and helped Harry remove the dress robes. "Was there anything else that I can get for you this evening?"

"James will need all of the usual accessories to go with the robes, including a sturdy pair of matching boots in either suede or leather; preferably with no more than a half inch heel," Sirius answered in Harry's place when the teen had frowned briefly in uncertainty over the question.

"I will see that they are included. Did you wish for the robes to be completed this evening…?"

"Tomorrow afternoon will be soon enough," Sirius assured the woman as he gave her a rakish smile.

"I will personally see to it that your order is ready for you to pick up by lunch time. What name shall I hold your order under?"

"Sirius Black; the world's sexiest wizard and most wanted bachelor."

Harry snorted as he stepped off of the stool and maturely kicked his godfather in the ankle before he fisted his hands at his side, bowed deeply to Madam Malkin so that his torso was parallel to the floor, and sincerely intoned, "_Moushiwake arimasen deshita, I should not have lost my temper._"

It wasn't until he straightened back up and noted the looks of complete and utter confusion on everyone's faces that Harry realized that he had accidentally slipped into Japanese because it had been Agil that had taught him how to properly apologize when he'd made a mistake. Blushing over the mistake, Harry quickly cleared his throat and repeated his apology in English, "Sorry, I only meant to apologize for losing my temper in response to your employee's chatter and accidentally slipped back into Japanese out of habit."

"Nay, young man, I owe you an apology for my employee's rudeness. You showed remarkable control in containing your magic for as long as you did and preventing it from spinning out of control despite your justifiable irritation."

"At least allow me to apologize for my godfather's deplorable behavior," Harry insisted to Madam Malkin's amusement and Sirius's indignation while ignoring the bit about his magic being out of control since he still firmly believed that his magic was game generated. "I've been trying to train him how to behave in polite company but well… as they say, you can't teach an old dog new tricks and his bad habits are unfortunately here to stay."

Madam Malkin laughed heartily as she carried Harry's dress robes to the back so they could be altered to fit him as the trio of wizards took their leave; Hedwig returning to her perch on Harry's shoulder the moment it was clear she'd no longer be in the way. Sirius sulked all the way back to the Magical Menagerie while Remus chuckled softly and Harry allowed himself to relax just a little bit more as a small smirk made its way onto his face over publicly pranking his godfather in return for his stunt with the portkey.

It only took ten minutes to buy a dozen rats from the pet store and order an additional two dozen (to be picked up by Dobby in a week). The trio then headed to the Leaky Cauldron to rent a room for the night and order supper. As soon as they had booked a room for the night, Remus sent a patronus off to Dumbledore to let the older wizard know they were all safe, that they'd not managed to finish their shopping before all of the stores closed, and that they'd return sometime the next day after they picked up the rest of Harry's supplies.

During the meal, Sirius half ignored the other two as he caught up with the happenings in the wizarding world (which he'd missed while he'd willingly locked himself up at Hogwarts during the past school year and all summer for his godson). The moment he read about the Death Eater attack during the celebratory parties after the Quidditch World Cup three days earlier, he started cursing up a storm; immediately capturing Harry's and Remus's attention. Sirius re-read the follow up article out loud for the other two (the main article had been printed back on the twenty-sixth).

Once he finished, Remus pushed away from the table as he wiped his mouth, dropped his napkin on his half finished meal, and left without another word; he was going to find copies of the Daily Prophet from the past two days and hunt down more information. Sirius in the mean time, gave Harry a crash course in wizarding politics before arming him with a list of names of those individuals that had been Death Eaters during the height of Voldemort's reign but escaped prison because they claimed the Dark Lord had Imperiused them.

Those names included the names of their wives, siblings, and children in addition to the names of those Death Eaters that had been caught and imprisoned after Voldemort had fallen (including those that had died). Harry was warned to watch out for all of those individuals that walked free and also warned him to never kill any human that attacked him if he could at all help it (citing how the wizarding world would turn on him in a heartbeat and label him the next Dark Lord).

The only exception were the various shades of Voldemort since the man was far more monster than man; though he was encouraged not to speak of those victories if at all possible (not that Harry had ever really talked about those encounters except in passing).

The rest of their stay in Diagon Alley passed in a blur for Harry as they stopped by the bank so that Sirius could visit his vault. The moment he stepped inside, Harry was approached by a goblin and ordered to either apply for a larger vault or to take some of the money out of his current vault because there wasn't room for a single knut more and he'd just inherited another small fortune from an old witch that passed away without family. Harry opted to have all of the sickles and knuts in his vault exchanged for galleons to reduce the total number of coins in the vault instead.

Something that irked the goblins since it would mean that Harry was essentially hording gold.

Though to be fair, Harry had spent quite a bit of money over the past year through Dobby as the elf turned the Chamber of Secrets into a garden and a private retreat. Harry mollified the creatures a bit by withdrawing two thousand galleons from his vault (with Sirius's help since Harry didn't want to pick up a random pile of coins like he had the first time he entered his vault). He then had half of that amount converted into British pounds (which netted him three and a half thousand pounds; the rate of exchange set to allow the goblins to make money on all exchanges through the fees they charged regardless of which way the conversion was going).

He wasn't really certain why he needed the real world currency since there was no place to spend it within the game (that he was aware of anyway).

After finishing at the bank, the two of them picked up Harry's fourth year books from Flourish and Blotts along with a number of books on advanced theory, a few that contained collections of useful spells, and anything else that looked either remotely useful or grabbed Harry's interest (such as the _Monster Book of Monsters_ and _Man Eaters; A Complete Guide to the World's Flesh Eating Plants_). Their next stop was Slug and Jiggers Apothecary where Sirius helped Harry obtain a Master's Potion Kit, which contained exactly five ounces of every legal potion ingredient in existence (even the rarer ones) and which was only sold to adults that had passing scores on both their O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. potion exams (as a safety precaution to prevent inexperienced brewers from blowing themselves up).

That cost Harry a good five hundred galleons (that would be transferred from his vaults to the store's vaults in order to further reduce the vault's contents). Harry thought the cost was well worth it though as the cabinet that the kit came packed in was a magical construct of art; it had a Limited Expansion Charm, a Feather Weight Charm, an Anti-theft Charm, a Sorting Charm (to keep the ingredients in alphabetical order), a Preservation Charm (to prevent the fresh ingredients from rotting), and a No-Spill Charm (to prevent the vials from falling out if the cabinet was knocked over while open). The vials of ingredients were further charmed to be non-breakable and non-tipping (which meant they wouldn't fall over unless physically picked up and tipped over) in order to protect their contents and Harry ordered two cases of extra vials (each one containing one hundred vials).

He also purchased the standard fourth year ingredients for class (since the Master's Kit didn't have the quantities that he would need for the entire year) before they headed to the cauldron shop to purchase additional cauldrons made from various materials (including marble, granite, silver, copper, brass, basalt, bronze, oak, and pewter). Harry wasn't certain why he needed so many different types and sizes of pots to brew potions but didn't question Sirius when the man gave the shop owner the list of cauldron types. He did, however, inspect each and every cauldron to confirm the quality of them; rejecting those that contained even the smallest of flaws – much to the annoyance of the shopkeeper.

The two of them then swung by Madam Malkin's to pick up his dress robes before Harry dragged Sirius to the trunk store where he'd purchased his Bag of Holding. He wanted to buy several more of the bags because his current one had so much stuff in it that it was getting hard to find what he needed when he needed it. He walked out of the store with a total of twenty-five bags all made from dragon hide in assorted colors; ten that he would use to organize his things, five extra bags in case he wanted to further organize his things, and the rest he intended to give as gifts. Sirius gave him a questioning look over the extravagant purchase as they left the store but said nothing since it wasn't like Harry couldn't afford to buy another five or six dozen of the bags if he truly wanted them.

The man was a little irked that Harry refused to let the man pay for any of his purchases so far though.

Their next three stops were the stationary store (to stock up on parchment, ink, and replacement quills), the joke shop for prank supplies (Sirius insisted), and the sweet shop to purchase candies and snacks. Sirius then took Harry to a pawn shop (more like a junk shop) to browse through the second hand artifacts for anything remotely interesting or useful.

Harry found an old birdbath that looked like a giant sunflower, a tarnished brass statue of a Chinese Fireball (a type of dragon), and a large box filled with old fairy lights* that had dimmed with age (which Harry thought he could brighten using his control over light). Sirius, on the other hand, picked up a charmed sailor's hammock (spelled to never unravel and never spill its occupant), a portable campfire pit (with Floo capabilities), a beat up 'beware of werewolf' sign that had the man cracking up for some reason, and a couple of items that he hid from Harry.

After that, the two of them headed to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour for a late lunch and an ice cream. They'd remain at the ice cream shop for the rest of the afternoon, sampling each and every flavor available and ordering quarts of their favorites to go while they waited for Remus to rejoin them. It would be well after dark before the three of them returned to the castle where they were met by an irritated Dumbledore who'd not been pleased that Sirius and Remus had kept Harry out of the castle overnight.

Dumbledore ordered Remus and Sirius out of the castle in response but the trio didn't let that bother them; the two older men could sneak back in any time they wanted to. That wasn't to say that Harry wasn't irked at having the two NPCs kicked out, he was; if only because their presence made it easier for him to forget that he was a virtual prisoner in MaM. His irritation was at least balanced out this time by Dumbledore's displeasure over the two adults not clearing their extended absence with him before they remained at the Leaky Cauldron overnight.

Harry would spend the next few hours experimenting with the old fairy lights. He had just finished restoring roughly half of the lights that he'd purchased when he was interrupted by the arrival of Caleo and Orsus; the two young stallions had come to find out when he'd return to the village. Harry regretfully informed them that because school was starting soon, he'd only be able to visit the village on weekends until the term was over because he had to attend daily classes during the week. He then gave them each one of the extra bags he'd bought; allowing them to pick out which color they wanted (Caleo took a bright red one that almost matched his hair and Orsus took a dark green one).

His brothers were depressed that they would see so little of him for close to nine months as they'd quickly grown fond of their two-legged brother over the course of the summer. According to both two year olds, Harry was turning out to be the best half a centaur they'd ever met; a running joke in the herd because he was the only herd member with two legs. Harry cheered the two of them up a bit by telling them they were welcome to stay with him in the Garden Chamber for the next two nights if they could get permission from Magorian.

Magorian agreed on the condition that the two young hunters brought all of the young foals with them in order to allow the rest of the herd to harvest further afield as autumn and the end of the growing season approached so that they could be better prepared for what the stars warned would be a harsh winter.

Bane and Firenze helped Orsus and Caleo escort the foals to the underground garden later that night. Before the two older adults left, Harry passed them five of the bags of holding he'd purchased (all of them in shades of green, brown, and gray so they'd better blend in with the forest); one each for Firenze, Bane, Ronan, Willow, and Magorian. Normally, the centaurs would have refused to have anything to do with 'human magic' but because Harry was both human and a part of their herd, they accepted the gifts in the spirit they were given (and because they were practical gifts and not useless junk that the herd had no use for).

Harry would then spend the last two days of the summer vacation playing with the foals, practicing his archery alongside his four-legged brothers while the foals napped, and working in the garden that had thrived over the past eight months under the diligent care of centaur, human, and elf (everyone that had access to the Garden Chamber had helped make the garden what it was today). The company, in the wake of the two older wizards being kicked out, helped Harry keep his mind off the fact that classes would be starting up again and that he was still a prisoner in a virtual reality game that seemed to be without end.

He was sad to see the centaurs head home around four o'clock in the afternoon on the first and desperately wished he could go with them. Unfortunately, Fawkes had delivered a message to him earlier (none of the school owls were willing to invade Hedwig or Gaki's domain) ordering him to be in the Great Hall at four-forty-five sharp in order to attend the Start of Term Feast. Sighing, Harry went to take a quick shower and change into his school uniform. He then reluctantly Teleported himself up into an unused part of the castle with no portraits, tapestries, or suits of armor (to avoid being seen) before he made his way down to the Entrance Hall where Professor McGonagall was patiently waiting for the arrival of the students.

His Head of House took a moment to inspect him (making certain he looked presentable in his uniform) before she sent him to wait in the Great Hall for the rest of the students. Harry sighed and glanced longingly at the huge double doors that led out onto the grounds (and therefore to the Forbidden Forest) before he dragged himself into the Great Hall as ordered and dropped himself down at the end of the Gryffindor table that was the furthest away from the staff table at the front of the room.

The end of the table was Harry's favorite place to sit because it was easier for him to get out of the room quickly and meant that he was surrounded by far fewer students. He rarely ever got to sit there though since it was also the favored seating for a number of the upperclassmen because there was less of a chance that a professor would catch them if they were looking to plan a bit of rule breaking.

In order to pass the time until the others arrived, Harry opened up his Player Menu and began sorting the Items in his Inventory into the new bags of holding he'd purchased after assigning labels to several of new bags according to what each bag would contain. He started with the most recent acquisitions at the very bottom of the list in order to transfer his new school things into the bag set aside for class supplies. Once that was finished, he began shifting the rest of his Items into the appropriate bag; one each for clothes, non-school books, unique treasures (Hearts), weapons, pranks and joke items, food, and plant based materials. An additional three bags were used to store animal parts: one to store bones, claws, teeth, and horns; another to store hides, skins, feathers, and spider silk; and the last one to store the various meats collected for Hedwig.

It was a rather simple but tedious task to separate everything into different bags simply because of how much stuff he'd picked up over the last three years.

He'd almost finished moving everything he'd picked up over the summer when he picked up the muted roar of a large crowd entering the castle. Harry transferred a few last Items before he closed out his Menu and spun around in his seat to observe the other students as they poured into the room. Most of them were perfect strangers to the fourteen year old; he had never associated with anyone outside of his small entourage and the Quidditch teams.

He didn't even know the names of the last two boys that stayed in the dorm with him, Ron, and Neville, though he knew they were friends with Ron and he only knew Ron because the boy was the youngest brother of Fred and George. Ron had stopped trying to befriend Harry and had actually taken to avoiding him after the entire fiasco with the rat-turned-man on that first Christmas in the castle. The redhead had further withdrawn into himself after he'd spent a couple of weeks near the end of the second year petrified.

The only reason why Harry was paying any attention to the other students now, was because of what he'd learned from Sirius about the children of 'innocent' Death Eaters attending the school alongside of him. Harry made a mental note to ask Hermione or Neville if they knew any of the children Sirius had named.

Harry abandoned his inspection of the other students as he caught sight of Hermione and Neville entering the room with Luna on their heels. All three of them made a bee-line for Harry once they saw him already seated. Luna reached him first and greeted him cheerfully before she skipped off to the Ravenclaw table while Hermione and Neville sat down beside and across from him. Fred and George stopped beside them for a moment and said hello before they moved off further down the table to sit with Lee Jordan (the student announcer of all the Quidditch games and the twins' close friend).

Soon enough all of the second through seventh years were seated at their respective house tables patiently (or in some cases impatiently) waiting for the Sorting Ceremony to start. At exactly five-fifteen, Professor McGonagall entered the room leading a long line of nervous first years. The Sorting Hat then sang its song, the new students were sorted into their houses, and the food appeared on the table in short order. Over the course of the meal, Harry had a dozen students from all four houses pointed out to him (all twelve of them the children of Death Eaters) by Hermione and Neville and he learned quite a bit about the kind of people those kids were.

He also asked for and received the dates of their birthdays in additions to Luna's, Fred's, and George's (Hermione had already known everyone's birthdate). Neville's most recent birthday was the only birthday that Harry missed after making the decision to give birthday gifts this year due to having received birthday gifts from his student companions for the first time. Neville's birthday was actually one day before Harry's birthday; also making his the easiest to remember. Hermione's was on the nineteenth of September, Luna's on the twelfth of March, and the twin's had been born on the first of April.

Harry marked all of the dates down in his calendar before turning to Neville and asking him straight out what he wanted most for a belated gift. Neville tried to protest but Harry threatened to give him two Christmas presents instead and the other boy relented and said he'd think about it and let him know by the end of their first week of classes.

At the end of the meal, Dumbledore stood up to give the usual Start of Term notices. Harry was a bit annoyed at first when the man stated that this year's Interhouse Quidditch Tournament would be canceled but the feeling passed the moment Dumbledore announced that the Tri-Wizard Tournament had been revived. By the end of Dumbledore's speech, Harry was certain that he was required to participate in the Tournament in order to move onto the next level at the end of the year (despite Dumbledore's insistence that only those seventeen and older would be allowed to enter).

Just before Dumbledore dismissed the students for the evening, the doors to the Great Hall burst open and a familiar grizzled old man with a scarred face, mismatched eyes, and a wooden leg limped into the Great Hall. The man was soon introduced as this year's Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor; Alastor Moody (or as Harry remembered Sirius calling him during the trip to Diagon Alley before his third year; Mad Eye Moody).

Harry would reluctantly make his way up to the Gryffindor Tower with the rest of the older Gryffindors after the feast only to unexpectedly find himself being dragged into an unused classroom by a determined Hermione Granger.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Moushiwake arimasen deshita – a very formal apology, usually used when one has seriously messed up and is apologizing to a stranger or a superior. I believe the literal translation is 'I have no excuse' and the deshita turns the phrase into the past tense. At least that is how I understood it. Again, I apologize to any native speakers for butchering your language; I'm blonde and I'm dyslexic which is really a terrible combination when it comes to learning new languages. I do try though. =)

**Game Terminology:**

MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter

**Notes:**

Monster Book of Monsters – a canon book  
Man Eaters; A Complete Guide to the World's Flesh Eating Plants – non-canon book created by author

Fairy Lights – contrary to popular (fanon) belief, the lights that Harry purchased are not made from live fairies. It is my understanding that 'fairy lights' is another British term that is used for the indoor Christmas lights that one would wrap around the Christmas tree during the holidays. The version that Harry purchased is magical in nature in that they do not require electricity to run and the reason they are dim is because the magic/enchantments used to light them has faded.

* * *

**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	27. Doubt

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Doubt

_Sunday, September 1, 2024 7:13 PM_

Harry bemusedly watched as Hermione warded the room with a dozen different spells (all of them spells that Remus had taught their small group towards the end of the last year) so that they could have a bit of privacy. If he'd not been so curious over being 'ambushed' he might have been annoyed at the way the NPC had waylaid him without so much as a by-your-leave. Once they'd been barricaded within the room, Hermione whipped around to confront Harry.

"I did a lot of research this summer, James, and I learned a lot of things that I think are relevant to your situation but before I talk about them, I need you to confirm something for me," Hermione stated bluntly as she sat the two of them down at one of the dusty desks before she leaned forward to pin him with determined cinnamon brown eyes. "Were you really one of the ten thousand players that had been trapped inside of the Sword Art Online server when the game went live on November sixth, twenty-nineteen?"

Harry reared back as if he'd been slapped before he jumped to his feet in a combination of fear and anger as he demanded, "Where the hell did you hear that name from!? I know I never once said the name out loud in the three years I've been trapped here."

"You told me at the start of last year that Akihiko Kayaba had held you and nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine other people hostage the day Neville and I confronted you about the cold shoulder you'd been giving us since we'd arrived at the castle. Mr. Kayaba was employed by Argus; he was the development director in charge of the Sword Art Online project and one of the main designers of the Nerve Gear. The only people Mr. Kayaba ever took hostage were the ten thousand players that had their consciousnesses forcefully locked into the server for Sword Art Online. Does the fact that you recognized the title of the game mean that my assumption that you were one of the players was correct?"

"Yes," Harry croaked out as he slowly dropped back down on the desk now that most of his anger (but none of his fear) left him in the wake of Hermione's calm explanation of how she'd figured out that Harry had been one of the SAO players; though part of him did wonder how she had gotten access to that information when he'd not found any links between SAO and MaM over the past three years.

"I was pretty certain I had been right but I needed to make certain. There is one thing that confuses me though; how did a nine year old manage to get his hands on a Nerve Direct Linkage Environment System?"

"What are you talking about?"

"There were age restrictions put in place that made it illegal for anyone under the age of thirteen to have a Nerve Direct Linkage Environment System implanted. In order for you to have experienced a FullDive back when SAO was released, you had to have had one implanted or the Nerve Gear never would have functioned properly enough for you to actually play any of the FullDive games that were available back in twenty-nineteen."

"Is that what the device is actually called? Strange, those players I knew always referred to the device as a NERDLES and mine wasn't properly implanted," Harry absently explained once he realized what she was talking about; his mind now more focused on trying to figure out why Hermione had suddenly been given an upgrade with the SAO information and less on censuring his mouth.

"At the time, I had no clue that you were supposed to have them surgically implanted; the image on the back of the package just showed a circle around a tiny picture of the device stuck to the back of the head. So I stuck it to the base of my skull and jammed on the Nerve Gear. It worked; so I never knew I'd done anything wrong until I was confronted about it within the game after a couple of friends learned I was a child trapped inside of the game."

"That doesn't really make much sense though because just sticking the thing to the back of your neck wouldn't allow it to interact with your brain because it wasn't integrated into your neural network and it would have fallen off the moment you took off the helmet. I suppose, theoretically, magic might have made it possible but magic and technology don't mix. In fact, you never should have been able to use the Nerve Gear in the first place because of your magic. Though, it is possible that your magic became part of the system in order to allow you to play the game instead of just shorting out the system like it normally would; especially if the NERDLES was improperly implanted."

"There's only one flaw in your logic."

"And what would that be?"

"Magic doesn't exist outside of the game," Harry answered with certainty. "The only magic I ever experienced was what was written into the gaming code of SAO and here in MaM; though I firmly believe the technological advancements that allow for people to play the games using the FullDive system is the true magic."

"Then how do you explain any outbursts of accidental magic that you would have had growing up?" Hermione asked with a slight frown.

"What do you mean?"

"Every magical child gives off bursts of magic during times of stress or intense emotion and the effects depend on what the child is feeling at the time. I used to float books down from the shelves that were too high for me to reach, repair the torn pages in my books after bullies ripped them, and once turned my neighbor's dog purple when it scared me. I even shrank a horrid frilly pink dress my father wanted me to wear for picture day on the first day of primary. Didn't you ever wonder about any of the strange things that happened around you when you were younger?"

"No; nothing like that ever happened to me."

"What about when you were scared or angry though? All kids get scared and angry."

"I was not allowed to have any emotions growing up; it was against the rules," Harry casually replied with a negligent shrug of his shoulders.

"What do you mean it was against the rules to have emotions? What kind of people make up rules that don't allow kids to feel?" Hermione asked in confusion, shock, and more than a little disgust mixed with disbelief.

"Oh, that rule wasn't for all kids; it was just for me. All of the rules that my aunt and uncle came up with were all meant for me. Well, that's not entirely true. There was one rule my cousin had to follow; no one was allowed to say the word magic or talk about things that were in any way related to anything unnatural. My cousin broke that rule just once and that was how I ended up sneaking his computer and game stuff out of the trash after my uncle threw everything away. If not for that, I never would have been trapped in SAO and I wouldn't be here now."

"Why did they have a rule specifically about magic?"

"My aunt and uncle didn't approve of anything that they considered unnatural and in their eyes an ability that allowed a person to think that they could do things that went against nature was unforgivable and encouraged people to be lazy."

"Or they knew you were a wizard and wanted you to believe that there was no such thing as magic because they were either jealous of your magic or they were afraid of it and thought that if you didn't know about your magic or if you believed that magic was a terrible thing, then you would never come to Hogwarts and never learn how to properly use your magic," Hermione shrewdly pointed out.

Harry jumped a bit as he'd never given any thought as to _why_ his aunt and uncle had made up any of the rules he'd had to live by as he was growing up with the Dursleys. Even if he had wondered, it's not like he could have ever asked them in order to satisfy his curiosity; asking questions was against the rules. Being forced to think about their potential reasons now made the fourteen year old extremely uncomfortable; especially when he considered the implications of what it might mean if Hermione's insightful guess at one possible reason why the Dursleys had been so insistent that magic did not exist in any way, shape, or form.

That had him questioning everything he knew as real and he _did not_ like it.

After a few minutes, Harry shook his head and flatly stated, "It doesn't matter why they made up the rules they did. Even if there was such a thing as magic in the real world, it wouldn't help me here and now. Magic won't change the fact that I've been trapped in a server for the last five years."

"Sword Art Online went offline on November seventh, twenty-twenty-one," Hermione softly stated as she reached into her messenger bag and pulled out the huge stack of articles she'd photocopied and passed them to Harry. "Most of the six thousand, one hundred, forty-six survivors began waking up within minutes of the server being shut down, though there were roughly three hundred of them that slipped into a coma after the game ended but they eventually woke up roughly three or four months later. Akihiko Kayaba disappeared a couple of days after the players were released on November seventh but he was pronounced dead shortly after the last of the survivors woke."

"I'm not sure I understand what it is you're trying to tell me," Harry stated as his brow furrowed in confusion while his eyes skimmed through the various articles in rapid succession (his mind only focusing on key phrases here and there and ignoring the hard to see photos accompanying the articles) as he tried to listen to Hermione at the same time.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that you aren't trapped inside the game any longer; that your friends, if they were still alive on the day the game ended, are out there somewhere and they are probably just as worried about you as you are about them."

Harry nearly dropped all of the papers as he jerked his head up to stare at Hermione in shock as a brief spike of hope flared up in his chest before it died in a flood of intangible pain. Anger then filled him as he automatically assumed that this was just another attempt by whoever ran the game to supplant reality in his mind.

"This world _is not real_. I haven't grown a single inch in _five_ years," Harry hissed as he narrowed his eyes and glared at the witch as he scrambled back to his feet. "I was forty-six inches tall when I linked up to SAO on that first day and I am still forty-six inches tall now despite the fact that I am fourteen. Human bodies don't just suddenly stop growing. Even if my growth had been stunted because of the two years I was trapped in SAO, I still should have grown an inch or two over the last three years if this place actually existed! And my scars? Each and every one of them was earned inside of SAO, bar those I've gotten since I awoke here in MaM; are you telling me that virtual scars can be transferred to the body?"

"Magic. Magic was most likely responsible. I don't know why you haven't grown physically; maybe it has to do with your magic forcing your body to a stand still because you don't believe it's possible for you to grow. Maybe your magic gave your body scars because you couldn't imagine yourself without them when you woke up."

"And in what reality but a virtual reality are people separated into human players and computer generated players?"

"I can't answer that because I don't see the things you see but maybe the two years you spent trapped inside of the game messed your magic up to the point that your magic became part of the game because it was the only outlet for your magic to protect you. You have to remember, magic is not meant to be mixed with technology."

"I suppose the next thing you're going to tell me is that it is my _magic_ that shatters the monsters when they die?"

Hermione's eyes filled with tears of frustration as she met his angry glare but refused to back down as she stated, "I can only imagine how hard it must be for you to accept that everything you've experienced for the past three years has not just been another game that you've been trapped inside of after you went from a virtual world filled with any number of wonders and terrors to a magical world that is filled with an equal number of wonders and terrors. I'm certain that being forced to stay here at the school hasn't helped dispel the belief that this is a game because you can't see what else is out there."

"I don't know why they've kept you locked up inside of the castle but there is a chance they are afraid that something will happen to you because you are trapped in a living nightmare that they can't possibly understand because they have no experience with virtual realities and computer based games. But if you don't ever allow yourself to consider the possibility that this world is real, then you might never have the chance to find your friends because you will have trapped yourself inside of a prison of your own making."

Harry was swept up in the maelstrom of emotions that were stirred by Hermione's words and like the day he'd been stripped of his adult avatar upon reaching level thirty in SAO, Harry didn't know up from down or left from right as his perception of reality was shaken at its very foundation. He soon found himself wrapped up in a hug for the first time in three years (Harry had avoided physical contact with the human NPCs over the past three years) and instead of pushing her away like he would have before, Harry clung to her in return; his entire being crying out for human contact (even if a large part of him still believed that it was simulated by the Nerve Gear) as he floundered inside of his own mind.

Harry's magic swirled around the pair as they sat there in each other's arms for close to an hour while Harry rode out his storm of emotions. Hedwig crooned softly in response to his see-sawing emotions as she peeled herself from her usual perch in order to escape the discomfort of being squeezed along with her wizard and settled herself a few desks over.

When Harry finally untangled himself from Hermione, he got the shock of his life when he happened to notice that her classification as an NPC had changed to that of a Human Player at some point between when she'd first wrapped her arms around him and when he'd let her go. Gone was the green halo that had encircled her diamond cursor for the last three years and in its place were a trio of status bars; a gold Health Bar with the number three beside it (the number identifying her as a third year), a green HP Bar, and a blue MP Bar.

She wasn't the first NPC to have their status within the game change but she was the first _human_ NPC to be changed; all the others had been magical creatures or beings. And while the other conversions could be blamed on the anomalies that had surrounded him from the moment he'd glitched out in SAO and the amount of time they'd spent in his company, that wouldn't explain why Hermione's classification had suddenly changed. He'd been interacting with a small number of human NPCs regularly over the last three years and none of the others had changed (regardless of how much time he spent with them).

"Are you going to be alright, James?" Hermione asked several minutes later when he hadn't stopped staring at a spot just above and to the left of her head.

"I don't know. I feel so lost and confused. I don't even know what to think any more," Harry rasped shakily; his absolute certainty that he was still trapped inside of a game had taken several blows over the course of the confrontation and he was still floundering as he tried to understand what had just happened.

"It will be okay, James. My mother always told me that everything happens for a reason and that nothing will ever make sense until after you find your place in the world and look back to see that all of your experiences were necessary to help you become the person that you were meant to be all along. Until that day comes, never give up and never give in."

"That sounds like something Agil would have said," Harry mused with a soft, sad laugh. "He once told me that I could only ever be as strong as I believed I could be and that if I let my fears cripple me, then I would never be strong."

"You miss him the most, don't you?"

"He became something of a father to me during that first year in SAO. He took me in and took care of me but he didn't treat me like a baby or try to hold me back like most of the other adults in the game did. He pushed me when I needed a push and he helped me up each time I fell. He was my first friend and the first person to ever see me as a person."

"Friends are important," Hermione declared with conviction and Harry nodded in agreement. "I've wanted nothing more than to be your friend since we met in first year. I didn't understand, at first, why you were so distant all the time but now I think I can understand a little of why you didn't want to get close to anyone else. I'd push everyone else away too if I thought there was a chance that they'd disappear one day."

"It didn't help that everyone constantly pestered me about why I was so short, how I got my scars, and demanded to be my friend," Harry quietly added. "There were only a handful of people that weren't trying to force themselves into my life or drag my life's story out of me and fewer still that didn't try to convince me that everything I'd lived through in SAO was nothing more than a silly fantasy that I'd made up to cope with my life. If there is even the slightest possibility that this is real, then I've probably ruined any chances of making friends here because of how I behaved the past three years and those friends I made in SAO probably forgot all about me as they moved on with their lives."

"I never stopped wanting to be your friend," Hermione murmured softly as she reached out to take hold of Harry's left hand and gave him a small, shy smile. "And I seriously doubt your friends from Sword Art Online have forgotten about you completely. From what little you have told me about them, I would think that they've been trying very hard to track you down using any information that you told them about yourself in order to make certain that you made it out of the game too."

Harry bit his lip as he stared down at their linked hands for a long minute. He then glanced up at the three bars hovering above and beside Hermione for a brief moment before he came to a decision. Reaching up with his right hand, he opened his Player's Menu to his Friend List and sent Hermione a friend request. He snickered a bit when she jumped the moment a tiny envelop icon in a small yellow circle popped up in the air right in front of her.

"What is that?" Hermione asked as she studied the little floating icon curiously once she got over her surprise.

"It's a request from me for permission to add you to my Friend List."

"Really? What do I need to do?"

"You just press on the icon to open the request and then press on the green icon to approve the request or the red button to refuse it."

Neither teen paid any attention to the way his magic reached out towards Hermione as she lifted her hand up to open the request. Neither one of them ever noticed the way Harry's magic guided Hermione's magic in order to allow her to interact with the manifestation of Harry's magic in the physical world. Hermione briefly noticed the tingle that shot through her hand and quickly spread throughout her entire body the moment she consented to being Harry's friend but she quickly forgot all about it when Harry distracted her.

"Aren't you… aren't you going to add me to your list now?" Harry asked nervously when she didn't immediately reciprocate the request.

"I can do that? How do I do that? I don't think I have a menu thing like you do. I've never seen anything like it before."

"Of course you have one, everyone has one; here, let me show you," Harry offered as guided Hermione into the nearest chair and moved around so that he was standing behind her right shoulder.

He then took her right hand in his and guided her through the process of accessing her Player Menu. Once again, neither of them noticed their magic interacting as Harry's magic transferred a copy all of the coding it had assimilated while Harry's soul had been trapped within the SAO server over to Hermione's magic; encouraging and pushing her magic to adapt. After a short lag, during which her magic was learning the new rules that Harry's magic had gifted to her magic, Hermione's Player Menu opened and she gasped in pleased surprise.

"Oh, wow, I didn't know I could do that. Is there a way to change the language? I don't know what any of the symbols mean."

"I think the default setting for the menu is Japanese kanji; at least that was the default setting for the Player's Menu in SAO. It's fairly easy to switch it over to romaji, which I always found easier to read. English wasn't an option when I first start playing, so I had to learn how to read and speak Japanese fairly quickly. I picked up some on my own but Agil was the one that taught me most of what I know. You shouldn't have to worry about that though since English was added to the list of language options shortly after I woke up here, so I imagine yours will have that option too. I just never bothered to change mine because I'm so used to the Japanese version of the menu."

"Ah, thanks, James; I can actually read it now. What does the 'em eh em' on my Stats Page stand for?"

"That's what I named this world when I first arrived. It stands for Magic and Madness."

Harry's heart skipped a beat for some reason when Hermione unexpectedly burst into giggles after he revealed what he'd named this world while her eyes danced with unrestrained humor. Harry then spent the next thirty minutes showing Hermione how to use her Menu, explaining how to read her stats, demonstrating how to access her Inventory (which was currently limited to what she had equipped on her person), and teaching her how to equip and un-equip items, weapons, and clothing.

They were both equally embarrassed when Hermione accidentally unequipped her clothes and she was left sitting there in her underwear; the poor witch blushing bright red as she fumbled with her Menu in order to put her clothes back on. Harry was just old enough that he was curious about what he'd seen but still young enough and confused enough to feel awkward about having seen her in her underwear; it wasn't like anyone had ever given him the 'talk' so he was pretty much completely clueless anyway. He had also been slightly more focused on the nasty scar that ran along the length of her rib cage on the right side of her chest than on the rest of her body.

Harry then collected Hedwig while Hermione dismantled her wards before they left the classroom shortly after that and made their way to the Gryffindor Common Room where Hermione got her first look at the world that Harry had been seeing since he arrived. The moment they stepped inside of the room, Hermione stumbled to a stop as her eyes landed on the objects floating above the heads of those around the room. Everywhere she looked, she could see the green cursors and green halos floating over everyone's head until she looked at Harry and blinked as she took in the trio of bars that sat above and beside him and the identical (if smaller) trio of bars and diamond cursor that floated above Hedwig.

That was when she noticed her own bars just off to her left and she frowned in confusion over why she and Harry appeared differently than the rest of the students. When she couldn't think of a reason for the difference she asked, "Why doesn't anyone else have the three bars like we do? Why does everyone, including you, have green diamonds floating over their heads?"

"Every creature or being has a diamond cursor; that is what sets a person or creature apart from the environment and from the various objects within the game; the latter of which sometimes have much smaller cursors to signify that they are accessible for player use. It also makes them easier to recognize at a glance. Green cursors usually mean that the person or creature is harmless or means you no harm while red cursors indicate the person or creature is an enemy. The cursors of those players that commit crimes will turn orange. If a player kills another player, their cursor will also turn orange and after they kill a certain number of other players, then their cursors turn red; indicating that they are an enemy to other players."

"And the green halos?"

"Everyone with a green halo is an NPC or non-player character; meaning, those people with green halos are computer generated characters. Those halos are another one of the reasons why I never bothered attempting to make any friends here; I had no interest in making friends with people that were nothing more than a fancy string of computer code given form." Hermione gasped as she spun around to stare at him with wide eyes when he added, "You had one of those halos around your cursor right up until you hugged me earlier."

"Why do you think I changed?" Hermione asked softly as she turned her confused eyes back to the groups of students spread out through the common room and studied them intently as if to determine what was so different about her.

"I don't think it was you that changed," Harry finally admitted after thinking about it for a few minutes. "I think it was more that you changed the way that I saw you. The photocopies and notes that you gave me and the things that you said to me earlier; they forced me to question everything I knew. You made me open my eyes to the one possibility that I never wanted to consider. Once I accepted that there was even a ghost of a chance that you might be right, you stopped being just another computer generated character and became a real person in my mind."

Hermione spun back around to face him again as she flashed him a smile and Harry's heart flipped and skipped for several beats this time. The two of them stared at each other for another minute before their attention was drawn to Neville as the other boy finally noticed they'd arrived and called out their names from where he was sitting on the couch near the fireplace that sat off to one side of the common room.

As they crossed the room to join Neville, Hermione glanced sideways to inquire, "By the way, I've been meaning to ask you; why do you now have a long braid in your hair? And why is it so many different colors?"

"I was adopted by the centaur herd this summer and the braid is made up of the tail hairs from my adoptive family; which is why there are different colors in it. They added strands of my hair to their tail braids in return to show their acceptance of me as part of their family."

"Really? Was it because you gave them a refuge while the dementors were here last year?"

"Ah, no," Harry replied as a light blush crept up his neck. "I'm not really allowed to talk about how it happened due to Herd Law but it all started because I sorta got drunk on nettle wine alongside a pair of young stallions that had just earned their adult names."

"You're still underage; why were you drinking wine?"

"Actually, by centaurian reckoning, I'm a mature adult that has seen fifty-six seasons. They even christened me with an adult name after I was formally adopted into the herd."

"What name did they give you?"

"Bellator, it's Latin for…" Harry started proudly.

"…fighting man or warrior," Hermione finished excitedly. She then grew stern as she shook her finger at Harry and added, "And you still should not have been drinking, James."

Neville snickered when he caught Hermione's admonishment as the two of them finally reached him. Harry pouted just a touch as Hermione had completely ignored the fact that he was considered a seasoned adult in the herd and therefore was allowed to drink. He was half tempted to point out that his godfather hadn't had a problem with him drinking but decided the man hadn't earned the blistering his ears would receive for that revelation (at least not yet). Once the laughter died down, the three of them spent the little time left before curfew double checking the summer essays they'd been required to write at the end of the previous year.

Over the course of the next hour he kept sneaking glances at Hermione and often caught himself staring at her status bars. Occasionally, he'd catch her staring at his own status bars or at the halos of the other students still in the room with them with open curiosity. At the end of that hour, the two boys bid Hermione good night as all three of them headed up to their dorms to get some sleep since they had classes first thing in the morning.

Harry would be spend all of his free time during the first three days of school going through Hermione's research notes and the photocopies she'd made of the newspaper articles that made any mention of SAO or Kayaba Akihiko. He often caught Hermione watching him intently each time he brought out those notes and when she wasn't exploring her new ability to manifest a Player's Menu and all of the perks that came with it. Neville often watched both of them; especially after the first time he saw Hermione open up her Player Menu and he pulled Harry aside to warn the shorter wizard that he would answer to him if he hurt Hermione's feelings again.

On the fourth day of classes, all of Harry's worries over whether or not he was trapped inside of a game took a back seat as the fourth years sat through their first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. Moody was, by far, the most intimidating professor the students had ever had; even more so than Harry recalled him being when he first met the man just over a year earlier. And the lesson he'd chosen to give them that first day of class was one that none of them would soon forget.

* * *

**Game Terminology:**

FullDive – the use of technology to fully immerse one's conscience in a virtual reality  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
MP – **M**agic **P**oints (Only in MaM)  
Nerve Gear – equipment created by Kayaba Akihiko (Argus); allows the user to enter FullDive  
NERDLES – **Ner**ve **D**irect **L**inkage **E**nvironment **S**ystem (a surgically implanted chip that allows the FullDive system to interface with the brain – the surgically implanted part may or may not be canon as it was something I thought seemed more logical than it just being part of the interface helmet)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
Orange Player – players who commit crimes or kill at least one player will have their cursors turn orange  
Red Players – those people who target and kill other players  
RPG – **R**oll **P**laying **G**ame  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

* * *

**AN:** _And there you have it; Harry is __**finally**__ questioning his certainty that he is trapped in another game. I know many of you have been impatiently waiting for that moment but any attempts to bring it in sooner resulted in many hours of frustration and writer's block because it skewed everything that comes after that moment; a fact that I know that I've mentioned a time or two in the past. _

_One thing to keep in mind is that Harry __**is not**__ going to automatically going to see MaM as reality. He is going to __**struggle**__ with the blows that Hermione just dealt to his beliefs. He is also not just going to take Hermione's word for it because he has not forgotten that a number of adult NPCs have spent __**three**_ _years trying to force him to accept MaM as the real world. His issues will have issues until he has solid, irrefutable proof._

_Oh, and one last point that I'd like to make: Hermione's theories on why James is not growing and why he has his scars are just that; her theories. She basically made a few educated guesses using the knowledge that __**she**__ has in her efforts to convince him that he is not trapped in a VR any longer but she __**does not**__ have __**all**__ of the information she needs at this moment. Is she correct? No, not entirely but she isn't exactly wrong either. There are other factors involved and they will be addressed later in the story. _

_Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I hope the confrontation was worth the wait. I even managed to sneak in a bit of fluff and teenage awkwardness there at the end of the chapter. ~ Jenn_

**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	28. Unforgivables

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Unforgivables

_Thursday, September 09, 2024 10:05 AM_

Professor Moody stomped into the classroom shortly after everyone had taken their seat and surveyed them intently for a few seconds before he picked up the register from the desk and began taking roll; his normal eye remaining on the class list while his enchanted eye glanced directly at each student when they identified themselves the moment he called their name. Once he made certain that everyone was present and accounted for, Professor Moody tossed the register aside and addressed the class.

"I have two rules you will need to follow when you are inside of this classroom. First rule; inside this room my word is law and you will obey my orders or I will kick you out of my class and fail you for the year. Second rule; when you are inside of this room you will give me your full attention and keep your mind on the lesson or I will use you as an example for the practical lesson of the day. If it becomes obvious that rule two is a problem for you, I will kick you out of my class and fail you for the year."

"For those of you who think you can break rule number two when I'm not looking at you, I will warn you now, I have eyes in the back of my head; or rather I have the next best thing," Professor Moody continued as he reached up to point at the overly large, electric blue eye in his right eye socket. "See this eye here? It's special; it can see through the back of my head, through walls, beneath invisibility cloaks, and roughly ten times further than a normal human eye can see. My point; you can hide nothing from this eye. If I wanted to, I could tell you exactly what you ate for breakfast this morning and just how much of it is still being digested in your stomach!"

Harry frowned in response to the professor's declaration over the capabilities of his eye (something he had not been told the first time he met the man). If the man's claims were true, then the man could potentially find the alternate entrance to the Chamber of Secrets regardless of how well it was hidden. The last thing he wanted was to have an adult invade his private sanctuary or worse, tell Dumbledore where to find the new entrance. Perturbed by the implications, Harry crossed his arms over his chest and blanked his face as he made a mental note to have Dobby to keep an eye on the entrance at all times and warn him if the man attempted to enter the secret passage.

"Does anyone have any questions about either rule? No? Perfect; I guess that means its time to start today's lesson. To start, I want those of you who know what the Unforgivable Curses are to raise your hands."

As one, the entire class put a hand up in the air bar Harry who merely unfolded his arms just enough to raise his right hand up a few inches; he never raised his hand in class. It was a habit he'd developed during the four years he'd attended the local primary school in Little Whinging due to the teachers ignoring him consistently enough that he gave up entirely on getting their attention for any reason. A habit he'd readily continued during the previous three years because he didn't want or need any more attention from any of the professors.

"All of you, eh? I thought as much based upon the attacks that had taken place within the castle last year. Now, how many of you know the name of at least one of the three curses that were classified as Unforgivables? What about those of you who know two of them? And does anyone know all three curses? Anyone brave enough to give me the name of one of the curses? Malfoy?"

"The Imperius Curse."

"Yes, I suppose you'd know that one given who your father is. Can someone else tell me what the Imperius Curse does? Boot?"

"It is a form of mind control that is extremely difficult to break free from when properly cast upon a victim."

"Correct! Who can name the next curse? Longbottom!"

"The Cruciatus Curse," Neville answered just barely loud enough for the class to hear him.

"Granger, tell me what the Cruciatus Curse does."

"It causes the person it is cast upon to feel intense pain and the longer a person is held under the spell the greater the amount of pain it is that they feel and the higher the chance that the pain will drive them insane," Hermione answered as she cast concerned glances at both Harry and Neville; Harry because she knew the curse had been used on him and Neville because of the way the Longbottom Heir always flinched whenever that curse was mentioned.

"Right in one. Which one of you can name the final curse? Bones!"

"The Killing Curse."

"Potter, tell me what happens when you are hit with the Killing Curse!"

"Nothing," Harry answered honestly as he recalled the time when Lucius Malfoy had cast the spell on him at the end of his second year. A frown briefly tugged at the corners of his mouth as he considered whether or not that incident was proof that this world was a game before his attention was drawn back to the lesson.

"I beg your pardon?" Professor Moody asked in confusion as he frowned at Harry.

"You asked what would happen if the Killing Curse hit _me_ and the answer is nothing."

"And what happens when that particular curse hits an ordinary person, Zabini?"

"It kills them, Professor Moody."

"Correct. Can any of you tell me how to counter any one of the Unforgivable Curses? Which spell you would use to defend yourself from certain death or endless pain? McMillan?"

"All three curses are unblockable and there is no spell that will protect you."

"Correct again. Does any one know how to protect yourself from one of the Unforgivables? Turpin?"

"There isn't any way to stop the curses."

"Wrong answer; we'd already established that! Someone else want to try? Parkinson!"

"Scream for help?"

"Wrong again! How do you even know there is anyone close enough to hear your screams in the first place? And what is to stop your attacker from silencing you before you can cry out? Let's try again; Abbott, what's your answer?"

"Hide?"

"That might slow down your attacker for a few minutes… but why chance it? What do you suggest, Corner?"

"Dodge the attack and run away."

"Correct! There is nothing you can use to block one of the Unforgivables; the only thing you can do is try to escape."

Harry frowned again as he knew that a solid shield (or at least his dragon-scale shield) could block both the Killing Curse and the Cruciatus Curse and had effectively done so on numerous occasions. He also knew that solid objects would stop the curses (even if they sustained some damage at the same time).

"Now, who can tell me how you recognize those three curses? After all, how do you avoid one of the curses if you can't even recognize it when you see it? Davis?"

"The color of the Killing Curse is acid green and the incantation is Avada Kedavra."

"Right. Who can tell me what the incantation and color of the Cruciatus Curse is? Weasley?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Patil… either one of you?"

"The incantation is Crucio and the spell is yellow in color," one of the identical witches replied.

"Correct. And the final spell? Finch-Fletchley?"

"I don't know, Professor Moody."

"Anyone else know? Go ahead, Granger. "

"The incantation is Imperio but I don't know what color the spell is; the book I read about the spell in didn't say."

"Very good and for the record the Imperius Curse has no color; it is one of a handful of spells that are completely colorless, making it difficult to defend against. So the only way to protect yourself against that particular curse is to practice _**Constant Vigilance**_!"

Most of the class jumped the moment the man yelled out that final phrase. Even Hedwig let out a screech of complaint; the loud shout had startled her out of her sleep. Harry absently soothed his familiar with one hand while he kept his attention on the wizard at the front of the classroom so as not to get in trouble for not paying attention.

"Right then; we've covered all of the basics and it appears that most of you at least know something about all three curses. I have just enough time left to give you a demonstration," Professor Moody declared as he pulled out a large jar that contained several dozen spiders.

Ron squealed like a girl when the man opened the jar, pulled out a single spider, and cast an enlargement charm on it to make it easier for everyone to see (the youngest Weasley boy was obviously terrified of spiders – even his boggart the previous year had been a large spider). Professor Moody then placed the spider under the Imperius Curse and had it perform an Irish Jig while standing on only four of its eight legs.

After a few minutes, he ended the curse and cast the Cruciatus on the spider. The thing screamed out a high pitched screech as it curled up on itself and thrashed about in pain. Beside Harry, Neville went chalk-white and jerked in his seat as he stared at the spider in horror. Lastly, the scarred wizard cast the Killing Curse on the spider which caused it to simply go limp in death the moment the green spell washed over it.

"Any questions?" Professor Moody inquired as he glanced up at the silent class that was still staring at the dead spider on the floor. "No? Good. Your homework is to write an essay on everything you learned about the Unforgivables today; due next Thursday when we meet for your next lesson. Class dismissed!"

Neville bolted out the door the moment the class was over without even bothering to gather his things; Hermione hot on his heels (the witch obviously concerned for her first friend). Harry took the time to pack up Neville and Hermione's belongings before he made to follow after the other two only to stop and glance back towards the front of the classroom when the professor called his name.

"Potter! Don't go any where yet; I want a word with you."

Harry slung Hermione and Neville's bags over his shoulder and crossed his arms over his chest as the blank mask returned to his face. Quite a few of the other fourth years cast curious glances between Harry and their professor as they left the room; a couple of the bullies even smirking at him as they loudly bet on how many nights of detention that Harry had already earned. Harry ignored them and kept his attention focused on the professor.

"In the future, Potter, I fully expect you to participate in the lessons," Professor Moody began the moment the rest of the students were gone. "Your half-assed efforts today were unappreciated. I also expect you to leave your attitude outside the door when you come to class and keep your smart-assed answers to yourself."

Harry said nothing in response as he'd not hesitated to answer when he'd been called on and had no idea why the man thought Harry hadn't participated or that Harry had given him an attitude. He simply stared at the man and waited to see if he had anything else to say. The man huffed a moment later and stomped off as he ordered Harry to get lost. Harry watched the man for another minute before he turned and left the room. He practically ran into Hermione and Neville right outside the door (the two had come back for their things and to look for Harry as Lavender Brown, another fourth year Gryffindor, had told them that Harry had been held back after class).

Harry silently handed the bags over as the three of them headed down to the Great Hall for lunch; his thoughts still firmly on the new Defense Professor. Lunch was a rather quiet and tense affair for the trio as Harry was still lost in his thoughts, Neville was as withdrawn as Harry had been after he'd been attacked by dementors during the first Quidditch game, and Hermione was worried about both boys. All three of them remained rather distant all through their afternoon classes and during supper as well. After the evening meal, Harry split off from the group in order to speak to Dobby about securing the Chamber while Neville and Hermione retreated to the common room.

From the moment he broke away from the others, Harry activated all of his SAO Stealth Skills in addition to using his Invisibility Cloak as he constantly monitored his surroundings using a combination of SAO and MaM skills. He only hoped the combination would be sufficient to hide himself and Hedwig from Professor Moody's eye long enough for him to sneak into the Garden Chamber unseen. When he arrived inside of the Chamber, Harry scanned the room for the little elf before he headed into the hidden apartment behind the statue and checked for the elf in the hallway closet that Dobby had chosen for his bedroom and found the green-eyed elf tending to an unfamiliar female elf that looked sick, drunk, or a combination of both.

"Where did the new elf come from, Dobby?" Harry automatically asked in confusion since Dobby had never allowed any elves in his room before (at least not that he knew of) before he shook his head to clear it of the distraction. "Never mind, that was not why I came looking for you. I need to know if you can protect and hide the new entrance to the Garden Chamber from a magical eye that can see through stone walls, invisibility cloaks, and people's clothes; I'm worried that the new professor can find a way down here or that he'll give away the location of the new entrance to Dumbledore."

"Dobby can use elf magic to protect the entrance but only the wizard's special secret spell can hide the entrance from magic eye and everyone else that goes looking for Master James's secret hidey-hole under the castle," Dobby replied as he nervously glanced between the unfamiliar elf and Harry several times. "Is Master James angry with Dobby for sneaking Dobby's friend into Master James's home?"

"Huh? What? Oh, no; I'm not mad, Dobby. I was just surprised to see her since the only other elf I've ever seen down here is Tizzy. What's wrong with your friend though? She looks sick… or drunk."

"Winky is being heartsick, Master James; her master freed her and broke her heart. And now Winky is drinking to escape the pain but drinking is not helping Dobby's friend."

Harry blanched as he took in the sickly pallor of the female elf, her bloodshot and fever bright eyes, the various fluids that were leaking from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, and the filthy dress she was wearing. She looked terrible and it made Harry highly uncomfortable to see her in such a state while thinking back to when he'd wanted nothing more than to set Dobby free and he felt absolutely horrible at the mere thought of imagining Dobby in such a wretched state.

"Is there anything we can do for her to help her get better?"

Dobby actually curled in on himself and began wringing his hands while his eyes darted back and forth even faster between the wizard and Winky the moment Harry finished asking the question. After a tense two minutes, Dobby hesitantly answered, "Dobby knows a way and Dobby wants to help Winky friend but Dobby doesn't want share his Master James now that Master James finally lets Dobby be proper elf. Dobby doesn't want to not have enough work again."

"But Dobby doesn't want Winky friend to suffer either. Will Master James bond with Winky friend and give her new family to fix her broken heart? Dobby promises not to clean Master James's bed while he sleeping if Master James gives Winky family; no matter how much work Dobby has to share with Winky friend."

"Are you saying the only way to help her is for her to bond with a new family?" Harry asked in an effort to clarify Dobby's rambling request in his mind.

"Yes."

"What if she doesn't want to bond with me?"

"Winky need family or Winky will die soon. Master James's magic is strong enough to help Winky forget her heart was broken by her old family."

"But is she going to want a new family?"

"Dobby not know… Master James has to ask Winky what Winky want. Dobby only knows no elf wants to die of a broken heart; it is most painful way to die."

Harry sighed as he glanced between the two elves before he fully entered the small closet (which was better furnished and far larger than his old cupboard under the stairs) so that he could crouch down beside the dying elf. He then asked Dobby, "Her name is Winky, correct?"

"Yes."

"Winky, can you hear me? My name is James and Dobby wishes for me to ask you a question," Harry stated as he addressed the female elf. He was more than a little surprised when the elf stirred upon hearing his words before she sat up to look at him with her large brown eyes. Seeing that he now had her attention, Harry asked, "Would you like to join a new family, Winky?"

"No family want Winky now; Winky is disgraced elf," Winky countered in a hopeless slur as her eyes became unfocused once more.

"Dobby asked me if I would bond with you," Harry informed the elf and he watched her eyes sharpen and widen in surprise. "Dobby is worried about you and because he said you were his friend, I asked him what I could do to help you. I don't want to make you do something you don't want to do though. So, I need to know if you'd like to bond with me or if you'd like me to find someone else to bond with."

"Dobby's master is willing to bond with Winky? Even though Winky is a bad elf?"

"Yes."

"Master James is the strongest wizard in all Hogwarts," Dobby bragged as he crept forward and wrapped his arms around Harry's left arm as he peered at Winky. "It took Dobby months to train him properly but now Master James is a proper master and he gave Dobby loads and loads of hard work that Dobby hasn't finished yet."

Harry glanced sideways at the elf he'd tricked Mr. Malfoy into selling to him a year and a half ago and snorted over the elf's claim that he'd trained Harry to be a proper master. He then shook his head as he recalled the week he'd spent being tormented by the elf at the beginning of his third year; the elf really had trained Harry after a fashion.

"Why?" Winky asked Harry after she stared at Dobby for a long minute.

"Because Dobby asked me to help you and I don't want to make Dobby sad."

"Winky would like new family then," Winky shyly croaked as she made an effort to clean up her face.

"Not fair!" a voice wailed as another elf popped into the small room. Harry immediately recognized Tizzy, the female elf that had been helping Dobby off and on all last year. "Tizzy met Master James first and Tizzy should have been Master James's first elf but Master James didn't ask Tizzy to bond. Tizzy took care of her Master James all first and second year Master James was being in castle until Dobby stole her Master James."

Harry palmed his face in response to the surreal drama that was playing out as the two female elves glared at each other while Dobby shrunk back away from the angry Tizzy. When he peeked up through his fingers it looked as if the two females were going to throw themselves at each other and start throwing punches and the last thing Harry wanted was the two creatures fighting over him for what seemed to him like a silly reason.

"I thought you were bonded to Hogwarts, Tizzy?" Harry asked in order to disperse some of the tension in the now crowded room.

"Hogwarts has too many elves and there is never enough work for Tizzy. Tizzy is youngest elf so Tizzy is given work last until you move into the castle and Tizzy was happy to serve Master James. Tizzy will always have small bond with Hogwarts but Tizzy wants a proper family with lots of work."

"_Mendoukusei,_" Harry complained as he scrubbed at his face for a moment before he looked up at both female elves. "If I bond with both of you; will the two of you be able to get along together or am I going to have to worry about the two of you fighting all of the time?"

The two elves blinked at Harry in surprise before they eyed one another carefully. After a five minutes staring contest, they answered in unison, "We will behave."

"Good. What do I need to do now to bond with the two of you?"

Dobby jumped back with a soft yelp as both female elves practically pounced on Harry and hugged him for all he was worth; both of them happy now that they had been given a chance to bond into a family (or re-bond in Winky's case). He never felt the two threads of elf magic wrapping around him or the way that their magic pulled on his own magic to complete the bonds. Once the bonding was over, the two elves pulled back away from him and beamed at him with sheer joy (the influx of his magic in their systems making them slightly giddy). The wizard absently noted that both females now sported the trio of stat bars and found himself unsurprised that they had been changed as part of the bonding.

"Dobby, you're in charge of getting the girls everything they need and I want you to keep an eye on Winky until she recovers completely," Harry instructed as he suddenly felt weary just watching the three excited elves watching him expectantly.

"The three of you will need to figure out how to share the various chores and jobs that need to be done. I know I already promised Dobby that he could cook all the meals I don't eat in the Great Hall and that he could take care of Gaki but there should still be plenty of other work to do. And I will need someone to protect the hidden entrances to the Garden Chamber from the castle adults."

"The rest of the critters living in the garden and pond will also need to be fed regularly and watched over to make certain they don't cause trouble or make too much of a mess in the main chamber. The gardening and cleaning can be shared, I think. And I know Dobby hasn't yet finished redecorating all of the rooms in here nor has he finished cleaning, repairing, and converting all of the tunnels that are connected to the Garden Chamber."

"I often have guests staying down here on weekends, so you can work out who will take care of which guest's room and needs between yourself. If worse comes to worse and there still isn't enough work for all three of you, I can ask Magorian if he will allow you to help watch over the foals or help them gather and preserve food for the coming winter when I visit the herd this weekend."

Harry paused for a moment to determine if there were any other jobs he could give the trio. When he couldn't think of anything, he shrugged his shoulders and stated, "If there is nothing else you need from me, I'm going to go write Sirius a letter before I go back to Gryffindor Tower."

The fourteen year old beat a hasty retreat out of Dobby's room at that point in order to avoid getting caught up in any debates (or potential arguments) about chore distribution. Harry then took a few minutes to pen a letter to his virtual godfather asking the man what else he knew about Alastor Moody, if he could get him more information on the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and if he had any work for a bored house elf or three (just in case). Harry then spent a few minutes telling him about the first few days of class, his plans to visit the herd on weekends, and made a brief mention of Hermione doing some outside research but didn't give any details on what he research was about.

At the very end of the letter, Harry attempted to casually ask (beg) for Sirius to allow him to spend the winter holidays off the school grounds with him. The teen desperately needed to get away from the school entirely and while he could easily teleport out, he knew that if he just up and disappeared, then he'd be hunted down and dragged back. It was something he had not considered doing sooner because he didn't really have any place to go. However, the possibility Hermione had raised that this world was the real world (with enough evidence for him to seriously question his beliefs) meant he now had a reason to leave the castle aside from just escaping his prison.

Once he finished writing the letter, he left it on the desk in the library knowing that Dobby would send it off for him with Gaki first thing in the morning. Harry then used Teleport to transport himself to his bed inside of the Gryffindor dorms to avoid being seen walking through the hallways. Thankfully, he always kept the thick curtains around his bed closed so no one saw the flash of blue as he arrived. He did manage to make the three boys playing a game of cards in the middle of the room cry out in fright as he unexpectedly climbed out of his bed and headed down to see if Hermione and Neville were still studying so he could join them.

He ended up crashing on the couch practically the moment he sat down to the amusement (and slight concern) of his two companions; the teen emotionally exhausted due to his worries about having his only refuge in the castle taken from him and over the continued inner turmoil that was the result of Hermione making him doubt his convictions. They let him sleep and kept the other students from disturbing him before they eventually curled up in a chair each when they got tired; none of them had felt up to bothering climbing the stairs after their exhausting day.

Friday morning and afternoon passed by quickly enough as nothing out of the ordinary occurred during the course of the day and the moment their final class was let out, Harry asked Dobby to transport the three of them down to the Garden Chamber (in order to avoid using the entrance for the time being). Dobby was then asked to find the twins and ask them if they wanted to spend the weekend in the Chamber (the elf to bring them along if their answer was yes and warn them not to use the entrance if they said no) while Tizzy was sent to deliver the same message to Luna.

Luna joined them a moment later and the four of them sat down to eat supper after Dobby returned without the twins (Fred and George intended to spend the weekend with Lee and the three chasers from the Gryffindor team). As they ate, Harry informed the three with him that he had plans to spend most of the weekend hunting in the forest now that it was free of dementors but that he would return to the Garden Chamber on Sunday morning. Hermione actually asked if they could go with him but he told her not this time; he needed the time alone to think and he would need to speak to the herd about the welcome the other students could expect to receive from the centaurs.

Before he headed out after supper, Harry spent an hour with Neville scrolling through his Inventory of plant related items as the other boy chose a couple of rare seeds and bulbs that Harry had picked up at some point over the last three years (Harry's belated birthday gift to Neville). Harry also gave his fellow fourteen year old a clump of winter berries from SAO in order to see if there was a way to get them to grow in MaM. Harry and Hedwig left through the tunnels after that and found Orsus and Caleo impatiently waiting for him at the exit closest to the village. The three of them played around for a bit in greeting before they headed to the village where the herd was celebrating over their exceedingly fruitful week long harvest.

Harry readily joined them in their festivities and proceeded to get drunk on nettle wine for the first time since the day he'd helped destroy the kelpie; the teen desperate and troubled enough to seek oblivion that night.

He would spend much of the next day catching, cleaning, and smoking fish and eels alongside a handful of younger hunters at the deepest part of the river where it ran through the village. He would take a break from the mind numbing chore around lunch time to play with the foals and yearlings for a couple of hours. Once night fell, the day's catch was moved further into the village to protect it from predators and most of the older stallions wandered off to read the stars, the yearlings and foals were sent to bed, and the mares gathered in the clearing.

Harry wasn't tired yet and had no desire to study the stars that night, so he stayed with the mares as they settled beside the handful of fires that had been lit around the clearing to keep an eye on the fish as they wove rope from various materials or candied large batches of acorns, chestnuts, and an assortment of wild berries while they told stories. He listened to the stories (which were actually herd histories, fairytales, and myths) with avid interest and kept the mares supplied with fire wood. He eventually fell asleep leaning up against Willow's flank as the mares left off telling stories in exchange for singing songs.

He would reluctantly return to the castle after breakfast the next morning to spend the rest of the weekend working in the garden with the others. They took a short break around lunch time to dine on toasted roast beef sandwiches and onion soup while sitting on the bridge with their feet dangling in the water as the young koi nibbled on crumbs and toes. After they finished eating, Hermione asked Harry to help her add Neville and Luna to her Friend List because she hadn't been able to get it to work for her. Harry asked her to show him what she was doing (so he could correct her mistakes) only to frown when it became apparent that she hadn't made a mistake; the function was just not working.

He then had her flip through her Menu to the Options Page to adjust her settings before he had her try again. When that still didn't work, Harry pursed his lips before he sent Neville a request from his own Menu in order to see if there was a glitch in the system or if there was just something affecting Hermione's menu. He then walked Neville through the process of accepting the invitation. Like it had when he'd befriended Hermione, Harry's magic reached out to guide Neville's magic through the process and because Neville's magic was still young and comparatively untrained when compared to Harry's; his magic didn't fight the intrusion (just like Hermione's magic hadn't fought the intrusion).

The same thing happened when Harry's magic went on to imprint the Aincrad Code into Neville's magic so that the other teen could fully interact with his Menu and through the Menu with Harry. By the time Harry had finished explaining the basics to Neville, his Status had been changed to a Human Player and Harry's belief that he was still trapped in a game took another blow the moment Hermione gasped and drew his attention to the change. Harry stared at the new status bars floating above Neville's head for a full minute before he asked Hermione to try sending her Friend Request once more.

This time, the request went through with no problems and Hermione and Neville had added each other to their Lists in no time at all; though neither one of them could send an invitation to Luna and Harry began to suspect that it was because Luna's status was still that of an NPC and not a human player. That made him wonder why he was able to send an invite to an NPC when the others couldn't until he recalled the fact that it was only through interactions with him personally that any of the NPCs within the game had been changed from NPCs to players (whether they were human or not).

Luna beamed at him and hugged him tightly when he went on to send her a request to add her to his Friend List; the petit blonde had wanted nothing more than to be his friend. Her halo morphed into a trio of status bars even before she accepted the request and was walked through the process of using the menu. (Harry's magic again reaching out to interact with Luna's and implant the copy of Aincrad's Code that would twist her magic enough to allow her to use her new Menu). The third year was crying happy tears by the time both Neville and Hermione had added her to their Lists (the younger teen ecstatic that she was now officially a friend of all three older teens).

Harry would spend the rest of the afternoon on the target range as he struggled with the doubts flooding his soul over the renewed blows his convictions had taken that afternoon. His heart was also breaking as the possibility that he might have been wrong all this time meant that it would have been entirely his fault that he hadn't been able to find Agil and the others for the last three years. Just the mere existence of that possibility was enough to nearly crush him.

The troubled teen would withdraw into himself the moment they left the Garden Chamber that night to attend the evening meal with the other students in the Great Hall. He also stopped talking to anyone outside of his small group of companions again, much as he had after the large dementor attack during his first Quidditch game the previous year. He cheered up just a smidgen at breakfast the next morning when he received Sirius's reply and opened it to find all of the information he'd asked for in addition to a positive response to his request to spend the holidays away from the school.

His mood plummeted once more when Dumbledore flat out refused to give him permission to leave the castle and refused to allow Remus and Sirius to spend the holidays at the school instead. The bearded wizard cited their pending foreign guests and the Tournament as the reasons why both requests had been turned down but Harry fully believed that the man was punishing him for Sirius and Remus keeping him out of the castle overnight back at the end of August. He would write out a short reply to Sirius passing along Dumbledore's refusals. Unknown to Harry, Hermione also sent his godfather a letter informing the man of her worry over Harry's current state of mind (because it appeared to get worse everyday).

His dark mood would last until Thursday when it turned blacker than ever during their next Defense lesson. Professor Moody had apparently obtained permission from Dumbledore to cast the Imperius Curse on all of the students that were fourth year or above in order to allow them to learn what it felt like to be under the curse and to see if they had the ability to fight off a weak version of the curse. Harry left a camouflaged Hedwig on his desk when the man called him forward to take his turn so that she wouldn't be exposed to the curse.

Much like the first time he faced a boggart, things went wrong when Harry was placed under the curse. The moment the vile dark magic slid over Harry's soul, he let out a cry of utter disgust, folded over as his stomach cramped and rebelled against the sensation of the foul magic tainting him, and promptly covered Moody's shoes and robes with what remained of his breakfast. The man jumped back with a cry of his own, slipped on the puddle of vomit, and ended up sprawled on his back right smack in the middle of the mess. Additionally, the man's magical eye popped out of his socket and cracked in half when it hit the side of the desk after Moody had smacked it across the room in his efforts to recapture the item before it could hit the floor.

Unlike his first boggart lesson (when the class had fled in fear), most of the class ended up laughing so hard they cried in response to the rather comical incident. Only Neville and Hermione had not joined in the laughter as they'd both been far too focused on Harry; the pint sized fourteen year old had remained doubled over in obvious distress and racked with dry heaves right up until the spell had been ended when Moody's wand had flown from his hand when he had hit the ground. Moody irritably dismissed the class at that point (even though the period was only half over) and Harry's two most frequent companions attempted to haul him off to the infirmary.

Harry instead steered them to the hidden entrance leading to the Garden Chambers so he could get as far away from Moody as he possibly could; letting them know he intended to ditch classes for the rest of the day and all day Friday as well. The moment they reluctantly left him just inside the entrance, Harry headed down into the Chamber and out through the tunnels; heading for the forest and ultimately the centaur's village with Hedwig trailing him from the air the entire way chittering worriedly in response to his current ill-health.

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**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat (though I'm sure it's redundant by now for me to keep posting this definition)

**Game Terminology:**

MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

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**10-10-15:** __Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.__


	29. Mendoukusei

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Twenty-Nine: Mendoukusei

_Saturday, September 14, 2024 All Day_

Harry created a small panic when he deliriously staggered into the village and collapsed in a small heap; his skin a pasty gray and sweat practically pouring from him as his body burned with a high fever. Fear of a deadly and contagious disease prevented most of the herd from approaching the teen until someone was sent to fetch Firenze. The palomino knelt down beside Harry the moment he saw the state his adopted son was in and demanded to know what had happened to the young mage.

Harry roused himself just long enough to tell them he'd been cursed with dark magic; a revelation that actually put the herd at ease since dark magic was not contagious.

It would take Ronan, Firenze, and Willow (the herd's Stargazer, Medicine Walker, and Healer respectively)* the rest of the morning and all afternoon to cleanse the tainted dark magic from Harry's soul. The teen would then spend all night in a healing sleep as his soul recovered from the ordeal. He would wake up several hours after sunrise the next morning feeling disoriented (completely unable to recall where he was or how he got there) and ravenous. It wasn't until Firenze told him that the tainted magic had been successfully purged from his soul that Harry recalled what had happened the previous day; though he still had no recollection of the trip between the castle and the village.

Harry would spend the rest of Friday sitting with the elder mares braiding the stems of wild garlic cloves and onion bulbs into long ropes that could be hung from the branches of trees so they wouldn't rot inside of the storage pits in order to let his body finish healing. The foals were disappointed that he couldn't play with them but he soon distracted them by telling them stories about the various monster fights he'd fought while within SAO; more than a few of the adults still in the village curiously listening in on those stories as well.

When a few of the older foals accused him of pulling their tails and making up some of the monsters he'd spoken about, Harry didn't hesitate to pull some of the rarer SAO Items that he still carried around in his Inventory. His truthfulness proven, to both young and old alike, the foals begged him for more stories and Harry tentatively shared some of the adventures he'd had since waking up in MaM. It was after he'd spoken of facing the Cerberus in his first year that Harry learned that 'Fluffy' had been Hagrid's pet and that the 'dog' had lived in the forest until it had been moved into the castle the summer before Harry's first year.

Harry felt rather miserable about killing the Hellhound now that he knew it hadn't just been some random monster. The fact that he was still floundering with the information that Hermione had provided him with didn't help matters either; since the mere possibility that he'd been killing _actual_ living, breathing creatures since he'd woken up in MaM bothered him. Even if it was just a game, alienating one of the few NPCs that provided him with information was not exactly a smart move if he ever hoped to finish or escape the game so he could find the others.

He vowed to give Hagrid a formal apology and Fluffy's Heart the next time he saw the large man and only hoped the gamekeeper would forgive him.

He was soon pulled out of his funk by the foals as the young colts began bragging about the things they'd done and the things they would do once they reached adulthood. The rest of the afternoon would fly by in a flurry of laughter and coltish antics. Harry would retreat to Orsus and Caleo's shared dwelling after supper that evening (the young hunters' lodging set up near the outer edge of the village where it was rather quiet and peaceful) to sleep off the last of the weakness he still felt due to the high fever he'd suffered from the day before.

His adopted family took the time to periodically check on him through the night while the rest of the herd participated in the standard end of week celebrations that the herd held for the duration of the fall harvest. Firenze in particular had been greatly troubled by the state in which he'd found Harry the previous day. The centaur had never before seen the wizard in such a vulnerable state (not even when injured) at any point over the three years he'd known the human child (none of the centaurs had witnessed the second dementor attack on the teen during the first Quidditch game of the previous year).

Bright and early the next morning, the trio of bonded brothers took off for an all day long hunting trip; after Harry had been declared completely recovered by Ronan, Firenze, and Willow. Their goal was to collect spider silk (to weave into extra blankets, bow strings, and rope) and completely clear out a second acromantula nest that had sprung up sometime last year. As they traveled through the forest, all three hunters harvested edible berries, mushrooms, and nuts as well as gathered up any tail hairs (from the unicorns, thestrals, and winged horses that lived in the forest), feathers (from both the magical and non-magical birds and other feathered creatures that lived in the forest), or spider silk they came across.

Harry for once didn't attack any of the creatures he normally hunted (such as the Bugbears, Doxies, and Pixies) when they crossed their paths; the teen uncertain of how he should feel about the possibility that those creatures might actually be _real_ animals that lived and breathed just the same as he did. If Orsus and Caleo thought it strange of him to not engage every creature they stumbled upon, the two young hunters kept their observations to themselves. Hedwig was a bit disappointed that Harry wasn't providing her with fresh Bugbear meat but she was more than large enough now to hunt Bugbears and other small prey on her own now if she truly got hungry.

It took the trio two hours to reach the newly established nest and less than an hour to clear out the sixty-some younger spiders that had taken up residence in a large rock formation in middle of the clearing (none of the spiders bigger than a large deer). The rest of the day was spent painstakingly removing and storing every last strand of spider silk that could be pulled from the surrounding trees, rocks, and dirt while Hedwig watched from the trees. Harry then cautiously crawled down into the spider den in the center of the rock formation (the entrance too small for the two centaurs to enter) where he found the dead husk of a young winged mare wrapped in a cocoon and a pair of twin foals; one dead and the other dying but not yet dead (both of which Harry assumed were the dead mare's offspring).

Harry carefully approached the weakly struggling foal (that didn't look more than a day or two old at most but was likely at least a month or so old) and spoke to it in a soothing voice in the hopes of not frightening the little one. Harry then pulled out an Antidote Potion that he still carried (the fourteen year old leery of using his final Antidote Crystal since he couldn't get any more) and used it on the foal in the hopes that it would counteract the spider venom that was killing the foal. He then carefully fed the foal the last two Healing Potions he had (Harry had given the third one to Remus to study this past summer in the hopes that it could be recreated). Much to Harry's relief, the HP bar of the foal went from red to yellow to green before it morphed into a trio of bars as the still weak winged foal nuzzled Harry's chest and gave a plaintive whinny.

Harry carefully cut the foal free of the web it had been tangled up in but left the incomplete cocoon it had been wrapped up in untouched for the moment in case the trapped wings were injured. He then carried the youngling out to his brothers so they could watch over him while he crawled back down into the rocks to clear out the den. Orsus took charge of the foal and gave it a quick inspection (the two year old had learned some healing from his sire and dam) while Caleo stood guard in the event that any stray spiders returned to the clearing. It was close to midnight by the time Harry finished gathering up the thick layer of spider silk that had been laid down inside of the den along with a countless number of drained creatures that the spiders had fed upon since moving into the clearing.

The last thing Harry did before the trio left was use his SAO Magic to destroy the den in order to discourage any spiders from nesting there a second time. The three of them then headed back to the village at a ground eating lope; Orsus still carrying the foal in his arms while Harry and Caleo protected their brother and his precious burden. It didn't take them long to reach the village and Orsus delivered the foal to Willow while the other two carried the collected spider silk to the underground storage pit.

Harry ended up dumping roughly three-quarters of the total amount of spider silk he held in his Inventory into the pit instead of just giving the herd what he had collected over the course of the day. His reasoning for doing so was the fact that he knew he had more silk than he could conceivably use and it was better to allow the herd to use it than allow it to simply take up space in his Inventory; even after Dobby had used a good percentage of what he'd gathered in his first and second years to make the rug that covered the Garden Chamber's floor.

Harry then crashed beneath the leafy shelter that belonged to Firenze and Willow while he waited for news about the foal the three of them had rescued; the teen exhausted due to the fact that he'd done most of the work today by hand instead of just relying upon the in-game pick-up function of his Inventory like he usually did (the only exceptions being for the remains of the dead critters from the spider den).

He was woken up the next morning by an irritated Hedwig due to the fact that the warm body of the rescued foal had curled up beside him some time after he'd fallen asleep. Harry softly shushed the occamy while he told her he still loved her best and that she would always be his favorite girl before he turned to inspect the little foal.

The color of the foal was a uniform slate gray with a darker mane and tail and lighter gray wings (one of which was wrapped up in a splint); identifying the foal as a Granian (the smallest and fastest of the winged horse breeds). This particular foal happened to be smaller than average for a young foal due to it having been born prematurely alongside its deceased sibling (as was normally the case when it came to twins); standing no taller than five and a-quarter hands at the withers (or reaching the middle of Harry's thigh at a height of twenty-one inches). It had a white half-mask splashed over its eyes and forehead giving the impression that the foal was wearing a face mask, a near black muzzle, and four uneven white socks. A quick glance at the creature's underside let Harry know the foal was a boy.

Breakfast with the herd was a trial that morning as the foal constantly sought out Harry's company (much to Hedwig's irritation; though Harry mollified her with a chunk of old Nogtail meat from his Inventory). When he finally headed back to the castle, Harry was accompanied by the stubborn little foal and carrying several gallons of mare's milk (carefully collected by the herd from a couple of winged mares that had given birth within the last two months). He would have preferred to have left the colt in the care of the centaurs but the gaki wanted nothing to do with anyone but Harry. By the time they reentered the underground garden, Harry had named the colt Mendoukusei or Mendou for short.

Mendou was a big hit with both Hermione and Luna; both witches had cooed over how adorable the little colt was as he trailed after Harry and constantly tugged and chewed on Harry's shirt with his teeth all afternoon long. Care of the colt was turned over to the elves when the four students were delivered to a random corridor by Dobby so they could attend the evening meal in the Great Hall with the rest of the students. Unfortunately, Tizzy delivered Mendoukusei to an exasperated Harry just as they reached the Entrance Hall with a tearful apology as the elf explained that the colt had nearly hurt itself trying to find a way out all the while whinnying in distress.

A number of students gaped in disbelief or squealed in delight when Mendoukusei boldly trotted into the Great Hall on Harry's heels. Needing answers for why the colt was being difficult, Harry marched right up to Hagrid with his friends and the winged horse in tow and demanded, "Hagrid, can you please tell me why in the world the annoying little monster disguised as a cute and fuzzy colt behind me won't stop following me everywhere?"

"Well, that's hard ter say, James. Where'd yeh find the little rascal?"

"Orsus, Caleo, and I found him half dead inside of the newest spider den that we cleared out yesterday (due to how close it was to the centaurian village) alongside his dead mother and sibling. I used an antidote on him, fed him a pair of healing potions, and hauled him out of the den before we took him to the village to be checked over by the healer and he's been following me ever since."

"Ah, well then, the little fella probably thinks yer his mother now after yeh fed him while he was in pain and most likely delirious due ter his near death state when yeh found him."

"_Mendoukusei,_" Harry complained as he wrinkled his nose over the latest situation he'd found himself in. "How can I get him to stop following me?"

"Oh, well, yeh can't."

"_Kuso!_"

"Mind your language, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore admonished with a trace of amusement; the man openly eavesdropping on the conversation along with the rest of the room.

Harry gave him a flat look that said he had bigger things to worry about than using polite words at the moment before he turned back to Hagrid to plead, "Isn't there something I can do?"

"Well, yeh just have ter give him time ter grow up a little bit; he'll not be so dependent on yeh after a month or two."

"A month or two?" Harry repeated slowly before he palmed his face and groaned. "Hedwig is going to kill me! She barely tolerates Gaki being in the same room with me and she still can't stand the elves. She absolutely hates sharing me!"

"I'd be more concerned with what you are going to do with the foal during classes," Professor McGonagall interjected in the wake of Harry's petulant declaration. "After all, you already missed two days worth of classes and class assignments this past week that you will have to make up."

"And you'll need to find a place for Mendou to sleep because you know Ron and the others are going to pitch a fit if you bring him up to the dorms," Neville added as he ducked his head to hide the smirk he was currently wearing over Harry's latest predicament.

Harry mocked glared at Neville from between his fingers before he sighed and scrubbed at his face for a moment. He then stared down at the colt that was cheerfully rubbing his face against his stomach. Harry sighed as he turned a doleful gaze upon his Head of House as he asked, "Professor McGonagall, could you please help me with a little four legged problem that I was saddled with last night? I'm told that I can expect the ordeal to last at least two months."

"Come see me in my office after supper, Mr. Potter; and we shall see what we can come up with to deal with your latest friend. Filius, do you have time to join us this evening for twenty minutes or so? I suspect that we shall need your expertise to reach a suitable solution to the problem that has just been brought to my attention."

"Of course, Minerva."

"Minerva, I hardly think…" Dumbledore started to object.

"Albus, can you please tell me whose responsibility it is to handle any student related issues that crop up during the course of the school year?" Professor McGonagall politely requested as she purposefully cut the Headmaster off.

"The student's Head of House, naturally; but I really think…"

"And whose job would it be to handle the matter in the event that the student's Head of House was unable to solve the issue?" Professor McGonagall demanded as she once again cut Dumbledore off.

"My deputy's, but this is not…"

"Precisely; do you recall what house Mr. Potter was sorted into three years ago?"

"Gryffindor but that is…"

"And who is the Head of Gryffindor House?" Professor McGonagall inquired as she raised her voice slightly to talk over Dumbledore yet again.

"You are, my dear; but there are…"

"And do you remember just who it was that you selected to fill the position of Deputy Headmistress eighteen years ago?" Professor McGonagall asked as she narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together as she all but glared at the bearded wizard.

"You again, my dear," Dumbledore answered tightly.

"And have I ever given you any reason to doubt my capability in carrying out any of my duties as the Head of Gryffindor House or as your Deputy?"

"No, of course not! But this is not…"

"And lastly, do you recall what you said in the emergency staff meeting that was called on the evening of January nineteenth during the previous school year?"

"Of course I do!"

"Are you certain, Albus? Because from where I sit it would appear that you've completely forgotten the decisions you made that night."

Dumbledore said nothing for a moment before he let out a sigh, slumped back in his seat, and wearily replied, "I see. Very well, Minerva."

"Wonderful; I am relieved to know that you are no longer questioning my capabilities as both a Head of House and as your Deputy Headmistress, Albus. Mr. Potter, please take a seat at your house table and get yourself something to eat; we will discuss your current situation after the meal."

"_Hai, McGonagall-sensei_," Harry automatically replied in Japanese as he gave the stern witch a jerky but respectful bow while he tried to figure out exactly what it was that had just happened; none of the staff had ever openly defended him like that from Dumbledore before.

As he mechanically ate the food he'd put on his plate, Harry would occasionally glance up at the staff table to stare at Professor McGonagall as he struggled to understand exactly what had just happened and after a moment he'd shake his head and return to his food before repeating the process. All around him, the rest of the students (bar those that he almost considered his friends) speculated on the entire incident; some of them focusing on the situation with Mendoukusei and the others focusing on the way Professor McGonagall had verbally and publicly torn into the _Headmaster_ over the entire matter (all in a rather polite and surprisingly _Slytherinish_ manner).

Twenty minutes later, when Professor McGonagall and Flitwick both rose from their seats, Harry pushed his plate away and climbed to his feet as they approached him. He followed the pair up to Professor McGonagall's office in silence with Mendoukusei trotting contentedly at his side. Professor McGonagall wasted no time in explaining the rules she and Filius had come up with during the meal with the help of the other professors that would end up needing to deal with the colt for the next two months.

He was required to train the colt to wear a halter and lead rope (with Hagrid's help) which the colt would need to wear at all times when traveling through the castle. Harry was responsible for cleaning up after the colt (such as if it voided any waste matter while inside of the castle or if it got into things it shouldn't). It was also Harry's responsibility to insure that the colt did not disrupt any of his lessons or cause trouble with the other students (such as eating their homework or destroying their personal belongings).

To help Harry comply with those rules, both professors spent the next hour teaching him a handful of spells. They taught him the Playpen Ward (to prevent the colt from wandering away from his side during lessons), the Vanishing Charm (to clean up any messes), the Scouring Charm (to help sanitize the floor after using the Vanishing Charm), a Sleeping Spell (for those classes where having Harry's attention split in two different directions could cause harm – Potions Lessons being one such example), a Tracking Charm (to find the colt if they got separated for any reason), and a Monitoring Charm to help him keep an eye on the colt's health.

Harry had no trouble with the Tracking Charm, the Monitoring Charm, the Sleeping Spell, and the Scouring Charm but the Vanishing Charm and the Playpen Ward both gave him problems (the latter two spells both N.E.W.T. level spells while the others were fourth and fifth year spells). He was at least able to get the basics of both spells down and mastery of them would only come with time and practice over the course of the week. Until he mastered the Playpen Ward, his professors had already agreed to cast it during his classes (few of them believing him capable of casting such high level spells despite seeing him cast a fully corporeal patronus at the end of the previous school year).

"Impressive wand work, Mr. Potter," Professor Flitwick praised at the end of the impromptu lesson. "I fully expected it to take you much longer to successfully cast any of those spells bar the Scouring Charm; which you were due to learn in December."

"Sirius gives me tips every summer to help me improve my spell casting," Harry stated with a half shrug as he absently pet Hedwig's tail as she tapped the appendage against his chest in irritation as she glared and hissed at the colt in turns as the winged foal slept at Harry's feet; Harry had just successfully cast the Sleeping Spell on the colt.

"I don't know if the idea of your godfather teaching you things should scare me or make me proud," Professor McGonagall groused with exasperated fondness. "That boy was one of my more brilliant students but his lack of self control and common sense drove me up a wall during the seven years he attended Hogwarts. Moving on, we've one last problem to address before we're done for the evening; sleeping arrangements for your little friend. I am aware of the fact that you have been spending your weekends down in the Chamber of Secrets alongside a few of your peers."

"We are willing to allow you and your companions to do so for the duration of the two months needed to wean your new friend from your side providing you allow both Filius and myself access to the Chamber so that we can see the living conditions in which you will be staying and so that we can check on you during an emergency. I also want to make it clear that any inappropriate behavior occurring between any of you while you are living beneath the castle will see the privilege being revoked."

"Will I have to give Dum… er… Headmaster Dumbledore access to the Chamber as well?" Harry asked pensively as he glanced between the two adults. "I know he doesn't like me going down there but it's the one place I have aside from the Forbidden Forest where I can escape to when I need to get away from everyone."

"So long as you promise me that you will allow Albus access to the Chamber when you finish your education and you grant Filius and I unrestricted access starting tonight, then I will respect your request to maintain the Chamber of Secrets as a private refuge," Professor McGonagall stated softly after exchanging a long glance with Professor Flitwick.

"I will promise to remove the traps I set up to keep everyone out after I finish my seventh year so long as I am not forced to continue living at the school against my will after my education is done," Harry countered after giving the request serious consideration.

"That is an acceptable compromise," Professor McGonagall agreed as she pushed herself to her feet, woke the colt with a flick of her wand, and walked to her office door. "Shall we go collect your erstwhile companions and inform them of the new arrangement while there is still time enough before curfew for us to give the Chamber a quick inspection?"

"I can send Dobby to find them… or maybe not," Harry started to offer as they exited the office only to cut himself off when they found all five of Harry's frequent companions milling around outside of Professor McGonagall's office.

"I suppose we should have anticipated that your little group of stalwart defenders would have followed you out of the Great Hall earlier," Professor Flitwick remarked with an indulgent smile as he spotted the lone Ravenclaw of the group.

"At least their presence saves us time; lead on, Mr. Potter."

Harry led the mismatched group down to the second floor passageway that held the hidden entrance; surprising both adults as they'd never suspected that there was more than one entrance leading down into the Chamber of Secrets (the of them unaware that the entrance they would be using was less than a year old). Harry then showed them how to set up and dismantle the traps that protected the hidden trapdoor and then did the same for the traps that protected the fake wall in the first chamber before guiding them through the illusions that hid the moving stairs.

Both adults were suitably impressed and shocked when they got their first look at the former Chamber of Secrets (both of them had been part of the group that explored the chambers at the end of Harry's second year after he'd disappeared into the Forbidden Forest). They were even more impressed with the apartment flat that had been built into the wall behind the statue; neither one of them had expected the extent of the changes that had been made to the underground chambers.

Harry left Hermione and Neville to give the two adults a tour of the Garden Chambers and various tunnel rooms while he fed Mendou a bottle of milk before spending a good twenty minutes grooming the colt's coat while Hedwig disappeared into the garden to sulk. After the tour, Professor McGonagall sat them all down and explained the arrangements that had been made to accommodate Harry's responsibility for the colt during the next two months and the rules that needed to be followed. Fred and George were quick to state they'd only be spending the occasional weekend in the Chamber with the others as they didn't want their other friends feeling abandoned.

That news actually allowed Professor McGonagall to feel even better about the arrangement; much to the twin's chagrin and pride (the latter strictly because the idea that their pranks were that memorable appealed to the mischief makers).

The two professors and the twins would take their leave just a little later after Professor Flitwick cast the charms on Hermione's and Luna's doorways that would prevent the boys from sneaking into their rooms. Harry walked the four of them to the stairs and Professor Flitwick quickly bid the teen goodnight and escorted the twins back to their common room when it became apparent that Harry wished to speak with Professor McGonagall alone.

"Was there something you needed, Mr. Potter?" Professor McGonagall prompted when Harry didn't immediately speak up once they were alone.

"I… I wanted to thank you… for everything you did for me tonight; I know you didn't have to."

"Yes, I did have to stand up for you; I would do no less for any of the children sorted into Gryffindor House because it is my job to look after all of those children sorted into my house. I don't usually make a habit out of picking favorites from amongst the students sorted into Gryffindor but there is always one or two that I come across every few years that need me more than the rest of the lions in my care. You are one such child; as are Miss Granger and Mr. Longbottom. Misters Fred and George Weasley, on the other hand, don't need me in the same way that you three do. I have not been blind to the suffering you have endured since the day you woke up and while some of it is of your own making, I'm well aware that there are some things beyond your control."

"You are a mostly well behaved child, Mr. Potter; you are usually polite, you don't bully the other students, you apply yourself to your studies, and you rarely ever ask for anything. And even though your tendency to break the rules and go looking for trouble every time I turn around, drives me spare; I believe that you mean well. That said; I do wish you'd allow me to help you. I'd be even happier if you would sit down with me one of these days and explain a few things for me so that I can better understand why it is you do the things that you do. I also realize that I've never given you reason enough to trust me these past three years and for that I apologize."

The two of them stared at one another for several long minutes; Harry's eyes filled with so many conflicting emotions that it was hard to pinpoint just what it was he was feeling at the time and Professor McGonagall's with regret, sincerity, and wistfulness. Harry looked away first as he dropped his eyes to the ground and scuffed his toe against the floor.

"Was there anything else I can do you for you tonight, Mr. Potter?" Professor McGonagall asked gently after another tense minute of silence had passed between them.

Harry started to shake his head no without looking up before he froze and started chewing on his lip in nervousness as he recalled the promise he'd made himself a couple of days ago and the missed opportunity he'd had to carry it out when he'd spoken to Hagrid regarding the colt. He then glanced up at Professor McGonagall from beneath his fringe as he tentatively asked, "Would it be possible for me to visit Hagrid tonight?"

"Are you looking to speak with him about fitting the colt for a harness and lead line?"

"No, I owe him an apology for something terrible I did in first year."

"Might I ask what is it you think you did wrong?"

"I was the one that killed the Cerberus that was being kept on the third floor. I never would have done it if I'd known the monster dog was someone's pet but I didn't learn the Cerberus belonged to Hagrid until this last Friday when I spent the day with the centaurs resting after they healed me on Thursday. And even though I know it won't bring his pet back, I do have a small part of the Cerberus I want to give to Hagrid so he can have something to remember his pet by."

"It is very mature of you to accept responsibility for the mistake you made and for choosing to make amends instead of simply sweeping everything under the rug, so to speak," Professor McGonagall stated once she got over her shock at hearing that Harry had killed the hellhound. "Why don't you go let your friends know that you'll be back in a bit and then I will escort you out to Hagrid's so that you might speak to him tonight?"

"They already know; they've been listening to our entire conversation," Harry pointed out with a small grin as he pointed up to where the three teens were currently peering down at them from the walkway above where the two above were standing. "And it will take less time to reach Hagrid's house if we travel through the tunnels."

"How did you know they were there?"

"I heard them following us out the door when I walked down here with you and the others."

"You're trouble seeking godfather hasn't been teaching you how to transform into an animagus form has he?"

"No, I'm still trying to learn the animal that best fits my inner nature. I read the book he bought for me, finished filling out all of the charts, and completed the calculations back during the summer after my first year but I've been stuck ever since. Why did you think I'd been learning how to transform already?"

"Some how I am not surprised to learn that he is helping you with that particular ability," Professor McGonagall stated in a dry tone as Harry led her through the tunnels to the exit point that opened up behind Hagrid's pumpkin patch. "And the reason I automatically assumed he was teaching you how to transform, was because an individual's senses are usually enhanced once they start learning how to change their body into the form of their inner animal. As a cat animagus, I have excellent hearing and eyesight, even in my human form, and I had not heard your friends following us and yet you knew they were there and claimed to have heard them."

"Oh. Listening was one of the first Game Skills I learned," Harry revealed as they traversed the pumpkin patch to reach Hagrid's back door. "It is also my Listening Skill that allows me to keep track of the bludgers and players during a game and how I know where to find the snitch; I can hear the wind whistling around the bludgers and other players and the wings of the snitch fluttering within a five hundred meter radius."

"How curious," Professor McGonagall remarked as she rapped briskly on the door.

Loud barking sounded from inside of the one bedroom cabin that Hagrid lived in as Hagrid's boar hound was set off by the knocking. Hagrid's voice was heard telling Fang (his dog) to be quiet followed by the sound of a lock being drawn back just seconds before the door swung open. Fang bolted out between Hagrid's legs and would have chased off the young colt that had followed Harry out of the Garden Chamber if not for Hagrid latching onto the dog's collar at the last second and holding the excited animal back.

"I wasn't expecting yeh ter bring James down here tonight fer his lessons," Hagrid exclaimed as he glanced between his two unexpected guests.

"We're actually not here for his lessons; though I suppose it wouldn't hurt for you to cover the basics while we are here, if there is time. We are actually here because there was something that Mr. Potter wished to tell you and since it is getting late I escorted him out to see you instead of leaving him to sneak out on his own. May we come in, or is this a bad time?"

"Yeh might as well come on in and sit down fer a cuppa and I can fit the wee beastie with a halter while I listen ter what James has to say."

Harry slipped inside passed Hagrid after the man lifted Fang up out of the way with the small colt obediently following in the teen's wake. Once they were inside, Fang ignored the colt as he curled up next to the fireplace the moment the groundskeeper set him back down on the floor (the dog obviously knew he no longer needed to protect the house). Harry nervously stayed on his feet as he watched Hagrid putter around the room gathering cups and pouring out three cups of tea before he dug into a hand carved trunk to pull out a large handful of tangled halters that he dumped on the table before sitting down.

"Don't just stand there, James; sit yerself down and tell what it is yeh need from me."

Harry shook his head and gave Hagrid a deep, formal bow as he stated, "_Moushiwake arimasen deshita, Hagrid-san_. I have done you a terrible disservice and came to formally apologize to you after I learned of the mistake I made and the grief I undoubtedly caused you."

"Here now, there's no need fer any of that now. There's nothing yeh could have done to make me angry with yeh."

"I killed your Cerberus. I didn't know it was yours or I wouldn't have killed it."

"What are yeh talking about? Dumbledore already told me that Quirrell killed Fluffy."

"No. I was there first, I fought and killed Fluffy. I beat all of the other traps too. The only thing the Two-Faced Voldemort destroyed was the mirror in the last room and even that was partially my fault since it had been destroyed by a curse that I deflected."

"Then I owe yeh my thanks," Hagrid stated as he climbed to his feet and walked over to where Harry was still holding his torso parallel to the ground to place his hand on Harry's head. "I feared Fluffy might have suffered in death that night and I would much rather know that he died painlessly than fer him to have been tortured ter death as I originally believed he was. Fluffy was getting up there in age too and he would have loved going out in a fight instead of dying a long drawn out death of old age."

Harry snapped his head up in shock over Hagrid's calm acceptance of the death of his pet; of course, it helped that the large man had had over two years to deal with the loss of his treasured his pet. Harry slowly straightened as Hagrid gave him a small push towards the table; a silent order to take a seat. The teen then shook himself out of his daze as he opened up his Menu and searched through the Bag of Holding that held his special treasures for Fluffy's Heart. A large blood red crystal heart with black flames trapped inside of it materialized in the air above Harry a moment later and he snagged it out of the air and held it out for Hagrid to take.

"This was one of the treasures I picked up from the fight with the Cerberus; it's Fluffy's Heart," Harry explained when he saw the confused looks on both of adults' faces. "It rightfully belongs to you."

"It's beautiful," Hagrid gruffly declared as he sniffled loudly and wiped the tears from his eyes. He then tucked the heart in his pocket and briskly began untangling the halters to hide his embarrassment over crying. "An acromantula silk halter would be best fer a young'un like the little one yeh have there; less of a chance of the halter chafing the skin but I don't have any on hand."

"I still have lots spider silk in my Inventory. I've braided quite a bit of it into ropes too."

"Let's see what yeh have fer rope," Hagrid instructed as he dropped the tangled halters back onto the table.

Half an hour later, Hagrid escorted Harry and Mendoukusei back to the tunnel entrance at the edge of the pumpkin patch while Professor McGonagall took a leisurely stroll across the grounds back to the castle proper. The small colt was wearing a lightweight halter made of the thinnest of silk ropes (the thing more of a string halter than a rope halter) to get him used to having something on his face. The weight and thickness of the rope would be increased in small increments every few days each time he got used to the feel and weight of the new halter until he was wearing a proper halter.

Harry had been taught how to make the halters by hand so that he could make new ones each time the colt outgrew his current one. The training halters would all be made strictly out of silk while the proper halter would be made from bicorn hide lined with spider silk and have a brass ring beneath the chin to clip a lead line to or a pair of brass rings on either side of the mouth to attach reins to if Harry decided he wanted to eventually 'break' the colt for riding or to the harness. The next step would then be training the colt to walk with the lead rope (a task that would be slightly similar to teaching a dog to walk on a leash).

That night, Harry bedded down with Mendou in the garden beneath one of the taller trees in order to avoid carrying the tired colt up the stairs. Hedwig joined them a bit later, the occamy softly complaining in a string of grumbling hisses as she used Harry as a bed in order to re-stake her claim on him while the colt slept pressed up against his back for the second night in a row.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Kuso – a swear word  
Mendoukusei/Mendou – troublesome; a perfect name for the new tagalong (also translated as this sucks or what a drag)  
Moushiwake arimasen deshita – very formal apology (past tense) that roughly translates as I have no excuse

**Notes:**

* The herd titles of Stargazer and Medicine Walker will be explained in a later chapter within the story; as will any other titles that crop up. The title of herd Healer should be self-explanatory.

Harry's reaction to dark magic – okay, I know his reaction in this chapter seemed overly extreme considering that he didn't end up anywhere near as bad when Lucius hit him with the Killing Curse (which had made him queasy at the time) though his reaction to dark magic was nearly as bad towards the end of his third year (when he was tortured) but I do have what I think are a couple of logical reasons for that.

First, all of the dark magic he'd been exposed to since entering the magical world has been building up with a considerable amount lingering from being tortured towards the end of his third year since I see it taking time for the dark magic to mostly disperse while leaving a residue or film behind unless it is cleansed. (Evidence for this belief comes from canon since injuries created by Dark Magic leave scars or are very difficult to heal – one example being Mad-Eye's many scars and another being George's lost ear).

And Second, I see the Imperius Curse as being the darkest of the three Unforgivables magically speaking because it is designed to completely subjugate the victim instead of merely cause them pain or kill them. Based upon those two reasons, the amount of dark magic Harry was carrying on his soul reached levels high enough to make him sick the instant the Imperius Curse washed over him. It is something that would have happened at some point regardless of what other dark curses he was hit with simply because of the first reason.

The reason why dark magic affects Harry to such an extent when it doesn't seem to affect others any where near as severely will be explained later in the story (something I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing but the chapter that explains everything is still a little ways off). A full explanation of the three Unforgivables as I see them will also be provided later within the story as I believe I made them slightly different than canon.

I hope that helps clear things up.

* * *

**10-11-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	30. Champions

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty: Champions

_Sunday, September 22, 2024 10:35 AM_

The next week passed by rather unremarkably as Harry split his attention between taking care of Mendoukusei and attending lessons. The only notable change in his routine had been the night of Hermione's birthday when their small group shared a cake and passed the birthday girl small gifts. Luna had given the older witch a Fairy-Flower seed; a type of magical flower that looked very similar to tulips and was known to attract fairies (something Hermione could plant in a pot at home so she could share a bit of magic with her parents). Neville gave her a charmed garden pot (the spells designed so that whatever was planted inside of it needed very little manual care) to plant the seed in; the outside hand painted with an assortment of flowers by the still sometimes shy teen.

Harry had had a harder time in deciding what to give the witch that had turned his entire world upside down at the beginning of the month. In the end, he made her a bracelet with tiny teardrop shaped pendants made from the scales of the Sandy Wyvern (matching the pendant he'd given her that first Christmas) strung between dainty ivory beads made from dragon bone (the beads made for him by Caleo in exchange for half a dozen high-quality Bicorn Hides) on a delicate cord of tightly woven spider silk. He was more than a little flustered when she'd given him a hug and a kiss on the cheek after opening the gift (Neville and Luna had only received hugs for their gifts).

The very next day, Sirius and Remus turned up in time to join the four for supper unexpectedly; the two of them had decided to sneak into the castle instead of replying to Harry's last letter (and due to Hermione's secret letter of concern). Harry was soundly teased about collecting strays when they learned about Mendoukusei and how the foal had adopted Harry as his mother. That weekend would be Hermione, Neville, and Luna's first guided foray into the Forbidden Forest with Remus along as a chaperon while Sirius stayed behind to speak with Professor McGonagall when the witch made her nightly rounds to check on the four students staying in the Garden Chamber.

Orsus and Caleo joined the group as they harvested assorted healing plants for the winter stores instead of visiting the village (the centaurs uncomfortable with allowing the other human foals into the village though they didn't mind them exploring the forest so long as they were accompanied by a member of the herd for their protection). Still, it was an educational trip that all three teens enjoyed for different reasons; Hermione loved learning more about the forest, Neville loved talking plants with Orsus, and Luna was thrilled to trade riddles with Caleo. Harry remained unexpectedly silent during the entire trip; the teen uncertain on how to feel about sharing his weekend forays with the other teens.

Each time they crossed paths with one of the monsters that Harry would usually fight, he'd automatically reach for his wand and ropes or his bow and arrows only to flinch and drop his hands as he shied away from the creatures; the only exception was if the creature or creatures attacked their small group or if they came across an Acromantula. And while his fellow students didn't notice anything off about his behavior, the older wizard immediately picked up on the teen's out-of-character behavior. Harry, in turn, knew that Remus was aware that something was wrong and tried to ignore the concerned looks that were sent his way as his long ingrained gaming instincts clashed with his real life morals due to his floundering certainty that he was still trapped in a game.

Shortly after returning to the underground garden on Sunday afternoon, Sirius dragged Harry off for a talk (after getting a brief report from Remus about Harry's behavior during the short camping slash exploratory trip). They ended up in the recently completed but only half furnished office where there was less of a chance of them being interrupted by one of the others. Harry dropped himself into the only armchair in the room while Mendoukusei curled up beside the chair to nap and Sirius sat down on the edge of the desk.

"As much as I enjoy spending time with you, it's not like you to request my company the way you did," Sirius bluntly stated the moment they were both settled. "What is going on, James? Your letters were far too cryptic for my tastes and I've never been very good at performing Legilimency on a person's handwriting since it involves a distinct lack of direct eye contact or a living brain."

Harry stared at his virtual godfather (his _potential_ real-life godfather) with troubled eyes for a moment before he curled up in the chair, wrapped his arms around his legs, and dropped his gaze to his knees as he dully answered, "I'm scared and I don't know what to believe anymore. When I first woke up here, I had no doubts that I had been thrown into another virtual world like Aincrad and nothing anyone said or did could shake my belief that this world didn't truly exist because no one could offer me any proof otherwise and everything that happened around me only reinforced my belief that I was right and everyone else was wrong."

"For the last three years, my only goal was to get strong enough to clear the game so that I could escape back to the real world in order to find my missing friends. I fully expected things to continue the same way this year and even learned what this year's major quest would entail the first night of term; the Tri-Wizard Tournament. I had already started making plans to enter the Tournament no matter what Dumbledore said about an age limit when Hermione pulled the rug out from under me before we even made it up to Gryffindor Tower that first night. Ever since then I've felt so… lost."

"Does this have anything to do with the fact that you avoided fighting ninety percent of the creatures that you guys stumbled upon while you were out in the forest this weekend?"

"Yes," Harry replied as he briefly flicked his eyes up to meet Sirius's concerned gaze before dropping back down to his knees.

"Why don't you tell me what it was that Hermione said or did that has you so shaken?" Sirius suggested when Harry didn't add anything further.

"She brought me a bunch of newspaper articles that were dated from between three and five years ago; each and every one of them containing information about Sword Art Online, Kayaba Akihiko, and the ten thousand people who had been held hostage inside of the game for the two years it took for the players to clear seventy-five levels of the game and for… for Kirito to beat the final Boss Monster. She then countered almost every one of the reasons why I was so certain that this world was no different than Aincrad and even made me question my life before the game."

"I want to hate her for making me question every thing but I can't because if she's right, then I will have my first real chance of finding my friends. At the same time I want nothing more than for her to be wrong because I don't want to be the freak that my aunt and uncle always told me I was. I don't want to learn that I've wasted the last three years living in a fantasy of my own making instead of trying to find Agil. And I don't want to be the delusional child that Dumbledore has called me for the last three years."

"Oh, pup," Sirius breathed as he quickly crossed the short distance separating them so he could crouch in front of the chair and drop his hand on Harry's head; his actions sharply reminding Harry of the night Agil had taken him home after he'd been caught in the glitch that had stripped him of his adult avatar. "Everything will be alright, James; we'll get through this together. Regardless of how things turn out, you are not and will never be a freak; you are a gifted young man. You are also not a delusional child; you're simply a young man that has been struggling to deal with everything that life has thrown at you with the tools and limited knowledge that you were given."

"I did listen to the things you've said over the past two plus years I've spent with you and I've seen you struggle to cope with some of your experiences here at times. And while you haven't exactly explained to me what you went through before you woke up in Hogwarts, you have told me just enough for me to figure out that something big happened to you that makes it hard for you to see the magical world for what it is when all you have to compare it to is that Aincrad place you've talked about and the muggle world. There is no doubt in my mind that you'll be fine once you find your balance again; you're a strong person, inside and out."

"Will you be angry with me or hate me if I chose to keep on believing this world doesn't exist because it is less painful than thinking I've been wrong all of this time?"

"No, pup; I could never hate you. As far as getting angry goes, every one loses their temper now and then but I can promise you that no matter how angry I might get, I will never hate you and I will never hit you. Don't be surprised if I prank you though."

Harry let out a soft snort and gave his godfather a small grin in response to the pranking comment before it slipped from his face as he asked, "Why aren't you mad me? I mean, I was rather rude to you when we first met and I've not exactly been all that nice at times…"

"Actually, I was rather angry at first but that had more to do with what I learned about where Dumbledore had sent you after your parents were killed. I was also quite angry at myself because if I had made different choices back on the night your parents died, then I mostly likely would not have ended up in prison and I could have protected you when you needed me. Your early rejection of me hurt but it was actually no less than I thought I deserved at the time. It took Moony months to convince me to spend time with you during the summers in order to get to know you and everything changed for me after I saw you face that graphorn."

"So, while we may not have gotten along all that well in the beginning, you eventually did give me a chance to get to know you and that is all that matters to me. And you'll find that we all have our moments when we are less than friendly towards even our best of friends or those we see as family. Like I said earlier, I know you've not had an easy time of things here and while I'm not the most patient of people, I am more than willing to give you all the time you need to come to terms with everything that has happened and everything you just learned."

"Thank you, that means a lot to me," Harry stated as he unfolded himself so he could meet Sirius's gaze.

"You're welcome, pup," Sirius replied as he ruffled Harry's hair before removing his hand from Harry's head. "Now, is there anything else your old godfather can do for you?"

"Can… can we maybe just be friends for now? I mean, I know you're supposed to be my godfather but I just can't bring myself to replace Agil; he was the closest thing to a father I've ever known. He was also my first friend and the first person to see me as a person instead of an unwanted burden and…"

"That's fine, James; you don't have to explain it to me. If friends are what you want us to be, then I am content for us to be friends for as long as you wish."

Harry let out a soft sigh of relief; the teen very thankful that the man hadn't been offended by his request. He then took a deep breath to settle his nerves before he informed his godfather of his plans for the year, "I'm still going to enter the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Even if there is a chance that I'm wrong about this world, I can't risk not completing this year's main quest on the off chance that everything Hermione gave me is just another attempt to supplant reality in my mind. I had hoped that getting out of the castle for a few weeks would give me a chance to do my own research but Dumbledore isn't going to let me go."

"I suspected as much when you asked me for more information on the Tournament and the Tournament's rules in your first letter. If you were any other fourteen year old, I would try to talk you out of entering but I am familiar enough with your abilities to know that you have a good chance of making it through the Tournament alive if you are chosen as one of the three Champions. The only real obstacle you'll have in entering is any precautions that Dumbledore takes to keep the students that are not yet seventeen from entering. Do you want me to stick around and help you train if you manage to enter your name and you are chosen?"

"Won't you get in trouble if Dumbledore finds out you are here? He told me that he wasn't going to let you come over for the winter holidays because of the other schools coming."

"I'm willing to risk Albus's wrath in order to be here if you need and want me here and better to ask forgiveness and all that rot," Sirius replied with a negligent wave of his hand. "Now, was there anything else you needed to talk about?"

"I don't think so."

"Alright, if you do think of anything, you know where to find me. Shall we go see what trouble the others have been getting into?"

"Before we go, will you let me add you to my Friend List?"

"I thought we already did that?"

"No… not yet; I need to send the request first."

"Ah, go right ahead."

"Okay," Harry murmured as he opened up his Player's Menu and sent the friend request as his eyes briefly flicked up towards the green halo around the cursor hovering above Sirius's head.

"What's up with the glowing dot?"

"It's how I make our friendship official. All you have to do is put your finger on it and then press the green button if you still want us to be friends and then I'll show you how to do the same."

Like it had when he'd befriended Hermione, Neville, and Luna through the game menu, Harry's magic reached out to guide Sirius's magic through the process and because Sirius's magic was still rather weak from the years he'd spent in Azkaban; his magic didn't fight the intrusion. The same thing happened when Harry's magic went on to imprint the Aincrad code into Sirius's magic so that the man could fully interact with the menu and through the menu with Harry. By the time Harry had finished explaining the basics to his godfather, Sirius's status had been changed to a Human Player much like the others had.

"Whoa, what's with the funky glowing green diamond floating above your head and the colored bars sitting off to the side?" Sirius demanded as he looked up and finally saw what Harry had always seen.

"What you are seeing is what I have seen since the day I woke up in this world. The diamonds denote players, characters, and creatures and the bars represent the player, character, or creature's status; you have them too. Those objects are one of the reasons I've been so sure that I was still in a game. Aside from a small handful that have changed for some reason after coming into contact with me, everyone else has green halos around their cursors (the proper name of the diamond thing) that indicate that they are NPCs or non-player characters; meaning that they are computer generated characters."

"You know seeing floating objects in the air isn't normal, right?"

"That's not true; wizards have spells that can make almost anything dance about in the air."

"Okay, let me rephrase that; seeing strange, glowing diamonds, halos, and bars floating above people's heads that no one else can see is not normal."

"I don't think I've ever been normal and at least I no longer have to be not normal alone because I am now one of five people that can see the unseen floating above people's heads."

"You're lucky I like you, squirt, or I would so hex your nose off your face and prank you six ways from Sunday."

"If you did that, then I'd have to get you back by turning your hair old-lady blue and giving you a receding hairline and wrinkles so that your face matched your age of older than dirt."

"I see how it is now; I take you under my wing to teach you how to prank others and now you feel like you can go about threatening to prank your superiors. Should I wake up looking older than Dumbledore, you will find yourself dressed as a leprechaun complete with your own personal rainbow and a pot of gold."

"Ha! I was pranking adults uglier than you since I was nine; all you did was teach me a few cheap parlor tricks. And be careful how you threaten me least you find yourself on Hagrid's doorstep trapped in your animagus form with a leash and a note requesting that he give you a flea bath and obedience training."

"You are a sadistic little runt, you know that?"

"Says the pot calling the kettle black."

"Is that supposed to be an insult? You do realize that you are a Black by birth right?"

"Well they say insanity runs in the family and I don't think they get any crazier than you."

Both of them burst out laughing at that point at their own absurdity. Harry then hugged his godfather on a whim, needing the warmth of human contact now more than ever as the man had just reminded him so much of mix between Agil and Klein during the course of their conversation.

"Come on, kiddo; let's go see if Moony has bored your friends to tears yet with his latest theory lecture."

"Neville and Luna would have just wandered off if they got bored but Hermione has to be half Vampire because she'll suck all the knowledge out of a person's brain in ten seconds flat if given half a chance."

"I am so going to tell your girlfriend that you called her a vampire… though, your facts are a bit mixed up, zombies are the ones that crave brain matter; vampires drink blood."

"I'm telling Hermione that you called her one of the walking dead."

"I hate to break it to you, but vampires are also considered the walking dead; so you called her one first. You aren't going to deny that she's your girlfriend?"

"She's a girl and she's one of my friends now I guess… so, yeah, she's my girl friend; just like Luna. Is there something wrong with that?"

"Er… James, has anyone ever given you the Wand and Cauldron talk?"

"The what?"

"You know, the Broom and Snitch talk?"

"Huh…?"

"The talk about the Birds and the Bees?"

"Um…"

"The facts of life?"

"Can you be more specific?"

"The sex talk, James."

"Er…" Harry stalled as his entire face went bright red with embarrassment.

"I'll take that as a no," Sirius sighed as he pulled Harry the rest of the way out of the chair; waking the sleeping colt in the process. "Let's go see what the others are up to for now and we'll discuss it later. For the record though, a girlfriend is not the same thing as a friend who is a girl. A girlfriend is a special girl that you treat a little differently than all of the other girls you know; she's the girl that you cuddle with in front of the fireplace on cold nights, the girl you hold hands with when you walk through Hogsmeade, and the girl you play kissy face with every chance you get."

"It is never a good idea to have more than one girlfriend at a time while you can have lots of friends who are girls; so long as you don't cuddle with any of them while you have a girlfriend. Hugs are fine but kisses and cuddling are a big no-no with girls that are not your girlfriend; unless they are family since harmless cuddling with family is always okay. Girlfriends tend to get quite angry when they catch you cuddling with other girls."

"How do you know if one of the girls you are friends with is a girlfriend?"

"You have to ask the girl in question," Sirius advised sagely. "They are usually the ones who know if they want to be your friend or if they'd like to be your girlfriend."

"Oh. How come only girls know that kind of thing?"

"I don't know; I never figured that out myself."

"Then how do you know they know?"

"Experience; I watched Prongs get hexed by more girls… well more like one girl because he only ever chased after Lily the entire time we were at Hogwarts though the other girls sometimes hexed him because he wouldn't give them a second look. It took him six years to figure out that he was going about it the wrong way."

"Girls sound scary."

"Too right you are… but enough about girls, we'll save that talk for later when I can have Remus help me explain everything," Sirius stated as they headed in the direction of the exit.

The rest of September and the first three weeks of October passed by fairly quickly as Harry pushed his doubts to the back of his mind in order to continue on as he had before Hermione confronted him at the start of the term. There were still times when he floundered though, because he hadn't forgotten the things he'd learned from Hermione's research notes and the newspaper articles she'd given him; even if he wasn't actively thinking about it any longer. The arrival of the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang on the twenty-seventh of October made it even easier to pretend that nothing had changed as Harry concentrated on the impending Tri-Wizard Tournament.

The students wouldn't learn how to enter the Tournament until supper the night before Halloween when the Goblet of Fire was unboxed in the Great Hall.

First thing the next morning, after spending the night reviewing his decision to continue on much as he had during his first three years, Harry boldly walked up to the Goblet of Fire with a visible Hedwig perched proudly on his shoulder and Mendoukusei trotting at his heels. The crowd of students surrounding the Goblet the Fire fell silent as the pint sized wizard reached the Age Line that had been cast around the Goblet to prevent underage students from entering. The adults present in the room that knew who Harry was and some of the things he'd done though the years shifted nervously as they tried to decide whether or not to intervene.

Harry ignored the staff monitoring the Goblet of Fire as he stopped at the Age Line and scanned the traps that had been placed around the flame filled goblet. A minute later, all of the wards protecting the Goblet shattered in a rather visible display (the teen purposefully showing off for the gathered crowd) and Harry stepped forward unhindered to drop the parchment with his name and school on it into the Goblet. When he turned away from the Goblet, he found himself facing an angry and disappointed Dumbledore and Harry silently stared up at the man for a full minute before he merely turned and walked away; leaving Dumbledore to fume in silence as the bearded wizard reconstructed the safety measures around the Goblet of Fire to prevent any one else underage from entering.

Professor McGonagall would later assign him a week's worth of detentions for disregarding the rules (a far cry from the month's worth of detentions that Dumbledore had considered assigning to him).

* * *

_Thursday, October 31, 2024 7:00 PM_

Harry felt Hermione shifting nervously in her seat beside him as the lights in the Great Hall dimmed down until the room was bathed in shadows after Filch had wheeled the cart holding the burning Goblet of Fire into the room. The blue-white flames rising up out of the ancient goblet were mesmerizing and Harry couldn't help but stare at the flames as they leapt playfully above the rim of the goblet. When Dumbledore stepped forward to announce that it was time to select the champions, Harry activated his Listening Skill so he wouldn't miss the names of the Champions being called out even as he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the dancing flames.

"Any moment now, the Goblet of Fire will present its chosen selections for this Tournament's Champions and as your names are called out, I would ask each champion to approach the staff table and make their way through the door to my right into the chamber beyond where they will be receiving their instructions on the first task."

As if the Goblet had just been waiting for Dumbledore to finish speaking, the flames suddenly turned red as a flurry of sparks rose up into the air along with a singed piece of parchment. Harry's eyes tracked that fluttering scrap of parchment much as he tracked the snitch during a game as it swept upwards before lazily drifting down within reach of Dumbledore's fingers. In the mean time, the flames had returned to their original blue-white color and Harry's gaze soon returned to the Goblet of Fire.

"Durmstrang's champion is Viktor Krum," Headmaster Dumbledore revealed after smoothing out the parchment and studying the name that had been printed upon it. Thunderous applause from all three schools was heard as the famous seeker rose to his feet and made his way up to the front of the room before heading off towards the door as directed. Shortly after the eighteen year old disappeared through the door, the Goblet's flames turned red a second time and yet another singed scrap of parchment was disgorged. "Beauxbatons' champion is Fleur Delacour."

A young witch with long silvery-blonde hair rose gracefully to her feet and made her way forward to the sporadic applause of her fellow schoolmates and more than a few male students from the other two schools. Harry recognized her as the one that quite a few of the other students discussed in the halls and during meals. Ron Weasley swore up and down that the girl was a veela simply because her mere presence seemed to draw the eye of nearly every male in the room.

Harry had read about veela but had never seen one in person nor felt the affects of the allure they were supposed to radiate so he couldn't say one way or another (unaware that he remained unaffected simply because he'd not yet entered puberty due to the aftereffects of the two years his body had spent locked in magical stasis). Before Harry's thoughts could tangle themselves further trying to decide where he stood on that particular debate, his attention was drawn firmly back to the Goblet as the flames turned red for a third time as it spat out what would have to be the Hogwarts' champions name.

Dumbledore tensed the moment he unrolled the parchment to read the name that had been printed on it and when he finally announced the third and final champion, his voice was rather flat, "Our third and final champion, representing Hogwarts, is H. James Potter."

Far fewer students clapped this time; more than a few of the older students resentful that they'd been overlooked in favor of a fourteen year old. His small group of friends and companions made up for it by being extra loud on his behalf as he climbed to his feet and confidently, if silently, made his way to the room where the other champions were waiting; the ever present winged colt trailing after him. Neither Krum nor Delacour blinked an eye when he entered the room; they'd both been present when he'd placed his name in the Goblet of Fire that morning.

Dumbledore shot Harry a look of disappointment when he entered the room along with the other school Heads (Olympe Maxime of Beauxbatons and Igor Karkaroff of Durmstrang) and the two Ministry Officials (Bartemius Crouch Sr. from the Dept. of International Magical Cooperation and Ludo Bagman from the Dept. of Magical Games and Sports) that were running the Tournament but Harry studiously ignored the man.

"Congratulations, all three of you have been selected to represent your schools in the Tri-Wizard Tournament. The first task is designed to test your courage in the face of the unknown," Mr. Bagman declared with a toothy grin as he rubbed his hands together enthusiastically and studied each of the champions in turn; his eyes lingering the longest on Harry. "The first task will be held on Saturday, November twenty-third in front of the panel of tournament judges and the student body."

"The champions are to face the first challenge armed with only their wands and they are also not permitted to seek or accept help from their professors for any of the tasks and information about the second task will be given to you once the first task has been completed," Mr. Crouch continued when Mr. Bagman stopped speaking. "Due to the demanding nature of the tournament, all champions are exempt from the end of term exams."

All three champions were dismissed for the night a few minutes later and Harry left as silently as he'd entered.

* * *

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
Dungeon – an area within the game where players can attack or be attacked by monsters (or other players)  
HP – **H**it **P**oints: the number of Life Force/Life Points/Health Points a person has  
MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
MP – **M**agic **P**oints (Only in MaM)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

* * *

**10-11-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	31. Drama

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-One: Drama

_Thursday, October 31, 2024 11:25 PM_

"Would you sit down, already, Albus? You're giving me a headache with all the pacing you've been doing," Minerva ordered curtly as she nursed the tumbler of scotch she'd poured herself the moment she'd entered Albus's office after checking to make certain all of her Gryffindors were inside of the tower (or in the case of Mr. Potter and his five friends, down in the Garden Chamber with Lupin and Black), if not inside of their beds.

"I can't help it, Minerva; Mr. Potter continues to thumb his nose at the rules that were put in place to protect him and he still refuses to stop treating life like it is some kind of game he must win," Albus growled even as he complied with the request. "I knew I should have protested against reinstating the Tournament this year or at least convinced them to host the Tournament at one of the other schools but Cornelius was adamant that it take place here at Hogwarts this year for some unfathomable reason."

"At least this time you have some control over the trials he will face," Minerva pointed out logically. "His first three years were nothing short of disasters and while Mr. Potter willingly threw himself into trouble, he would have never had the opportunity to do so if there hadn't been things happening inside of the castle beyond your control. And even you can't deny that the child has matured and grown stronger over the past three years; he's even taken to interacting more consistently with his small circle of friends."

"And yet he still isolates himself from the rest of the students and still regularly sneaks off out into the Forbidden Forest every weekend."

"You and I both know that the main reason why the students are discouraged from wandering in the forest is because the forest is home to the centaurs and they dislike humans trespassing in their domain. With Mr. Potter making friends with several members of the herd, there is little to no chance that they will be offended by his presence in the forest. Hagrid has mentioned that they've gone to so far as to allow the child into their village on more than one occasion."

"That's not the point!"

"Of course it isn't the point," Minerva retorted with no little amount of exasperation. "The point of the matter is that you are upset because Mr. Potter doesn't believe everything that you have told him is the cold hard truth. You've grown more and more frustrated with each passing month since he regained consciousness and you've grown more heavy-handed in dealing with him as a result. Really, Albus; kicking his godfather off of the grounds before the end of the summer just because Sirius kept him out of the castle overnight when they visited Diagon Alley?"

"And then to deny Mr. Potter a chance to spend time with his godfather during the coming winter holidays as well? Is it any wonder the boy refuses to listen to you when you treat him like a prisoner? How on earth you expect him to adjust to real life locked up here in this dreary old castle year after year without ever giving him a chance to see the rest of the world with his own eyes is a complete mystery in and of itself. You won't even allow him to visit Hogsmeade with the rest of the students."

"So long as he continues to treat life as a game, the boy is a danger to himself and those around him; I can not, in good conscious, let him loose on the world for fear that he would kill any number of innocents if he got it into his head that doing so was part of his 'next big quest'."

"You are doing Mr. Potter a huge disservice if you truly believe that he'd start murdering innocents just because you allow him off of the castle grounds. Despite his refusal to view our world as reality, he has never gone out of his way to harm anyone or anything for any reason; dark and dangerous creatures aside. He could have easily killed the possessed Miss Edgecombe last year after she tortured him and yet, he did not; not even when it was perfectly clear that she was trying to kill him."

Albus watched his deputy disappear through the door after that parting shot and he wondered whether or not she was correct in her assessments of the situation. He then wondered if young Harry knew enough to get through the rather dangerous tasks that had been agreed upon by the Tournament Committee or if the fourteen year old would need help in order to have a chance against the tasks that had been designed for students with two to three more years of education.

_Oh who am I kidding; that impertinent brat doesn't need any help,_ Albus thought miserably to himself. _I'm going to end up doing damage control because that child is far too stubborn for my own good. I best have Poppy and Severus stock up on headache relief potions as I just know I will need them by the time the first task takes place. May Merlin, Maeve, and Mungo give me the strength to persevere through these trying times and failing that, may the Lady of the Lake forgive me for failing one of her children._

* * *

_Friday, November 15, 2024 3:45 PM_

Harry calmly put away his things as he was informed that he had been called to participate in the Weighing of the Wand Ceremony for the Tournament as well as attend a press conference. He wasn't really looking forward to dealing with the press but thankfully, Professor McGonagall had taken the time to teach him how to deal with the reporters he could expect to encounter due to his selection as a champion during the seven detentions he'd served with her.

It didn't take Harry long to reach the room he'd been told to report to and he paused just outside the room to steady his nerves before he stepped inside to join the other two champions and the officials that had already gathered. Ignoring the disdainful looks sent his way by Headmaster Karkaroff of Durmstrang, Harry moved across the room to take his place beside the other champions only to find his path blocked by an unfamiliar witch. Harry glanced up at the woman and took in her rather masculine features, heavy makeup, jeweled spectacles, and shoulder length blonde hair done up in stiff curls.

She smiled predatorily down at him and he detected a glint of malice in her eyes even as he noted the three gold teeth that glinted in the light when she leaned down and reached out to pinch his cheek while cooing, "Oh aren't you just so deliciously adorable, Mr. Potter."

In the blink of an eye, Harry side stepped her touch using Sprint. He then used the old SAO Skill a second time in order to put several feet of distance between himself and the creepy witch. The woman sharply reminded him of Rosalia, from the Titan's Hand Guild in SAO; a guild that had sought out weak or inexperienced players, robbed them of their rare or hard to find items, and killed them. Harry had had just one run in with Rosalia and her guild; when they attempted to kidnap him in order to hold him ransom so they could extort money and rare weapons from Agil. Titan's Hand did not dare to even think about bothering him again after Agil had gotten through with them (and that was after Harry had dealt out a round of punishing pranks).

"Oh, isn't that just too cute, little Mr. Potter is a wee bit shy," the woman declared in an overly sweet tone that was slightly irritated.

"No, I just dislike creepy strangers touching me," Harry countered as he spun around to scowl at the woman for daring to call him little before he turned his attention to Mendou as the winged colt trotted caught up to him and head butted him in the shoulder (the colt now standing as tall as his hip at the withers).

Before another word could be said, Dumbledore arrived with Garrick Ollivander, the Wandmaker; who had been called in to confirm that each champion was in possession of a fully functioning wand. Harry didn't pay any attention to the process of weighing the champion's wands; his eyes constantly tracking the creepy woman from beneath his messy fringe as she scribbled away at a piece of parchment she held in one hand. He was therefore caught somewhat off guard when the tall, white haired man stopped directly in front of him and thrust his hand out at Harry.

Harry blinked at the hand in confusion before he glanced up to meet the man's weird silver eyes and he couldn't help but jump backwards over find the man standing so close to him. He then narrowed his eyes and shot a glance sideways as the other champions sniffed disdainfully (Delacour) or chuckled (Krum) at his reaction. Irritated at being caught off guard and over being laughed at, Harry squared his shoulders and returned his gaze to the wand maker and arched an eyebrow.

"I will need to see your wand, Mr. Potter, if I am to inspect it to insure that it is in proper working order," Mr. Ollivander pointed out with amusement as he straightened up but left his hand out.

Sighing, Harry pulled up his Player's Menu and scrolled down through his Inventory for his wand. More than one person in the room stared at the strange display of glowing pages appearing in the air in front of Harry; very few of those present had seen Harry access his Menu previously. A few jaws even hit the floor when Harry's wand appeared from out of nowhere in a flash of yellow sparks and hovered in mid-air in front of Harry. Harry then closed out his Menu before he snagged the wand out of the air and passed it over to the Wandmaker handle first. The man simply blinked at the wand for several minutes before Dumbledore politely cleared his throat in order to wake him up.

"Er, right, thank you," Mr. Ollivander slowly replied as he carefully accepted the wand. "Let's see… this one is one of my more memorable creations, a rather supple wand made from holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, and in remarkable condition considering it's been in use for over three years now…"

The man trailed off as he rolled the wand in his fingers for several minutes as he frowned down at the wand as if something about it confused him. He then shook his head (either in denial or to dismiss some outlandish thought he'd been contemplating) before he flicked his wrist and conjured a stream of popcorn kernels* that loudly burst into popcorn the second they hit the air; startling more than a few people and the foal standing beside Harry.

"Well, I suppose it is working then," Mr. Ollivander mused as he inspected the wand a second time while he ignored Mendoukusei as the winged colt wove around the man's feet in his efforts to eat every last piece of conjured popcorn off of the floor once he'd gotten over his fright. "Highly unusual though… such a strange conundrum… you have used this wand regularly, Mr. Potter, have you not?"

"Yes," Harry replied without hesitation.

"And it has given you no problems?"

"None."

"How strange and unusual…"

"Is there a problem with the wand, Garrick?" Dumbledore asked with some concern.

"No… I wouldn't go so far as to say that, just a few peculiarities that weren't there when I first created this wand and sold it to young Mr. Potter here. As fascinating and troubling as it is, it will not prevent the young man from using the wand. Though, if it gives you any fits do not hesitate to contact me Mr. Potter."

"It won't," Harry confidently stated as he accepted his wand back and immediately returned it to his Inventory. "It works better for me now than it did when I first got it."

"Of course," Mr. Ollivander murmured as he stared at the empty hand where Harry's wand had sat just seconds earlier.

The rest of the meeting was spent posing for a series of photographs that would appear in the Daily Prophet alongside an article on the Tournament. Harry calmly answered a small handful of questions from the woman that had creeped him out after she was introduced by Ludo Bagman as a reporter by the name of Rita Skeeter from the Daily Prophet. Any overly personal questions she asked of him were met with a blank faced stare that flustered her; something that rather amused and impressed Krum (as a fellow celebrity long used to dealing with the press).

Surprisingly, the articles that would be published on the Tri-Wizard Tournament following the Weighing of the Wands would not contain anything overly personal regarding Harry due to his age. That was mostly because Dumbledore and Sirius had both warned the editor of the wizarding newspaper against publishing personal facts about a minor or openly slandering a minor; a move that saw Skeeter's articles on the Tournament or on Harry personally being carefully edited.

Once the press conference was over, Harry collected Mendou and headed for the entrance to the Garden Chamber. He'd stopped worrying about Professor Moody 'seeing' the entrance right about the same time that Professor Moody's eye was busted after Harry had gotten ill in class because of the dark magic. Apparently, that eye had been the only one like it in existence and the man was having a hard time getting it fixed or replaced for some reason. The professor had been less than pleased with Harry over the accidental destruction as a result but for some reason the man had not assigned a detention as expected. All lessons on the Unforgivables had also stopped about the same time.

As soon as he reached the Garden Chamber, Harry climbed up the stairs that led to the former basilisk's chamber inside of the statue's mouth to check on Hedwig. The occamy had taken up refuge within the hidden chamber two weeks earlier for some reason and had refused to come out no matter what. Harry wasn't certain if she was just sulking or if there was something wrong with her. He'd asked Hagrid about her behavior a few days earlier but the man hadn't had an answer for him at the time.

Hedwig greeted him with a chorus of crooning trills from the center of the nest she'd made from feathers, strips of hide, and leaves the moment he entered the room. He spent a few minutes lavishing attention on her before he pulled several chunks of Bicorn Meat from his Inventory and set them aside in a bowl for her when she got hungry. Harry then left the chamber and nearly tripped over the waiting Mendou. Pushing the growing colt out of the way so he could get through, Harry headed into the apartment in order to get something for supper; Mendou happily trailing after him.

Harry would then spend the rest of the weekend in the centaur village helping to shore up some of the older lodgings as a cold front moved into the area. Late on Saturday night, one of the hunter patrols brought news of the humans moving three nesting Dragons into the Forest and Harry guessed that they were likely there as part of the Tournament. He wasn't at all worried over that revelation; Dragon fighting was his specialty. In fact, now that he knew the majestic creatures were involved, Harry was looking forward to facing his first Dragon in this world (Norberta didn't count since he would never face her in a fight).

When he returned to the Garden Chamber on Sunday afternoon, Harry was waylaid by Sirius and Remus to follow up on the discussion Sirius had had with him back in September.

"Hey, squirt, can you join us for a moment; Moony and I need to talk to you for a moment," Sirius instructed as he stuck his head out from the tunnel that held the underground Quidditch Pitch.

"What about?" Harry inquired as he automatically changed directions to join Sirius inside the Tunnel Pitch (as it had been dubbed by Hermione) as the older wizard held the door open for him.

"Research and girls," Sirius replied seriously as he closed the door with an ominous click.

"Why don't I like the sound of that?"

"Relax, James; it won't be all that bad," Remus assured him from where he was sitting at an outdoor patio table set with afternoon tea for three. Harry eyed him skeptically as he slid into one of the chairs as Remus poured him a cup of tea and Sirius served him a raspberry, white chocolate, and macadamia nut scone. "Padfoot mentioned that Miss Granger had done some research on your behalf over this past summer…"

"…and while you and I spoke about it briefly, you never said exactly what it was she found and I thought that Moony could go through her notes to get an idea of where to start looking for more information," Sirius finished when Remus trailed off uncertainly.

"We won't force you to show us the notes she gave you," Remus added when he noticed the slight scowl forming on Harry's face as he glanced back and forth between the two adults. "It's just that I can gather more information from those places where it would not be safe for Miss Granger to venture and those places where she would not be welcome due to her age or gender and potentially get a wealth of information that would not be found in a library."

Harry dropped his gaze to the table as his hands systematically destroyed the scone on his plate; ripping the innocent treat to shreds as his insecurities and fears from the start of the term came rushing back. He should have known that his virtual godfather (or was he real?) would have remembered him mentioning the newspaper articles that Hermione had given him back at the start of the year.

"We just want a chance to better understand why you see things the way you do," Sirius added when it didn't look like Harry was going to respond. "I also want to know more about the funny glowing things that float above everyone's head because they drive me crazy whenever I'm around large crowds. I tried to explain them to Moony but he thinks I'm just imagining things because he can't see what we see."

Harry sighed and abandoned his ruined scone to open his Inventory Menu. He then paged through the list of items held in the Bag of Holding that he'd placed his school things in to withdraw the Item labeled as Hermione's Research. A large stack of handwritten notes and photocopied newspaper articles appeared on the table beside his plate a moment later.

"Is there some way to make a copy of them?" Harry asked as Sirius reached across the table to snag the pile before Harry changed his mind about letting them read through the information. "I don't want to lose them in case Hermione wants them back at some point since I don't know if she kept copies of her research or not."

"Yes," Remus answered as he plucked the pile from Sirius's hands and set them back on the table. He then incanted a soft, "_Geminio_," as he pointed his wand at the stack of papers; causing the stack to split itself in half to form two identical copies.

"What spell was that?" Harry asked curiously as his mind automatically began listing at least a dozen potential uses for such a spell. "Can it be used on anything or are there limits to what it can be used for? Is there any possibility of the spell damaging the original item that you attempt to duplicate? Will you teach me that spell?"

"It's called the Duplication Charm," Remus explained as he passed Hermione's original notes back to Harry after casting the spell a second time in order to create a second set of her notes that he handed to Sirius (so that both men now had a copy of their own). "It can be used on any non-living object; such as parchment, quills, rocks, jewelry, or clothes. It will not, however, copy the spells and enchantments that have been placed upon an object."

"The spell will also not work on living things or food, including plants; meaning that you can't form a copy of flowers, seeds, potions, or chocolate. You could copy a wooden bowl but the copy would be brittle and easily broken; just like the paper and parchment I just copied will be easier to tear or decay if I don't protect them with spells. And if you were to copy a scone, the copy would be inedible and likely to make you sick if you ate it. The original object copied using that spell will be left unharmed, along with the enchantments on it, so long as the spell is cast correctly. And, I'd be more than happy to teach you the spell when we're finished here."

"Thank you, Remus."

"You're welcome."

Silence fell over the trio as both Sirius and Remus began reading through the notes and articles that Hermione had collected and written while Harry used a spoon to mash a bit of clotted cream into the mess that he'd turned his scone into so that he could eat it. It would take the two men just over an hour to skim through everything and Harry couldn't help but notice the confused looks that crossed their faces every now and then.

"Would you be willing to explain a few things?" Remus asked once he set his stack of copied notes down. "While I am familiar with the muggle world and some of the muggle technology in use today, there is much I don't understand because magic and technology does not mix well and electronics tend to explode violently around witches and wizards; the older and more powerful the witch or wizard, the more spectacular the explosion. And while I know what a computer is; I am not familiar with the internet, online gaming, or the term FullDive. Nor do I see any connection between Miss Granger's research and you; you're name isn't even mentioned in any of the articles."

"Hermione had mentioned that magicals can't use most technology when we spoke at the start of term. That was one of the things that make it hard to believe that this world is real because I never had any problems using the computer I stole from my cousin after my uncle threw it in the trash. The internet is something like the Floo network that I've heard about; it allows people from all over the world to share information back and forth through special computers called servers that hold and store information. Online is a reference to information that is stored on a server or computer connected to the internet."

"Online gaming refers to those games that are found on the internet; the main software for the game resides on a server and the people that wish to play the game install the portion of the software that allows them to access the main program on their computers. That allows them to play together with people from all over the world. It's really no different than a regular computer game except you can play with other people. Some of the games played online allow you to play the part of their chosen character and they follow a number of quests in order to complete the game; those kinds of games are called role-play games that most people refer to as RPG and the game world where the quest takes place is called a virtual reality or VR."

"Close to six years ago, one company created a special kind of virtual reality game where you could step completely into the virtual world of a game. The term that they use to describe a person entering those game worlds is FullDive because the system controlled all five of your senses to make it seem like you were really in another world. The name of the equipment that allows a player to use the FullDive system is Nerve Gear in combination with a NERDLES, which stands for Nerve Direct Linkage Environment System; I think… that's what Hermione called it anyway. The first FullDive RPG game was called Sword Art Online…"

Harry went on to describe the rules of the game world, the wonder that was Aincrad, and Kayaba's trickery in trapping them inside of the game. He then spoke of the day he'd reached level thirty and how his avatar had died over and over again. He avoided mentioning the Immortal Status that the game had awarded him but did admit that something had changed him that day and Agil's theory that the reason Harry felt pain the game was because his NERDLES hadn't been properly installed. Harry also told them that most of his scars came from the two years he was living in Aincrad and the fact that he still had those scars another reason why he was so certain that he was still trapped inside of a game.

"… and when the game ended I woke up in Hogwarts without my Nerve Gear, still looking exactly the same as I had at the end of the game, still able to access my Player Menu, and still interacting with the world around me as if I was still in the game. It wasn't until Hermione confronted me with the information she'd found through her research earlier this year that I began to have doubts about this still being nothing more than a game. It scares me to think any of this could be real though."

"I don't know what to say; your story sounds so outlandish that it can't possibly be true and yet at the same time it is too intricate and detailed to be a lie," Remus quietly stated with stunned amazement.

"James, can you do what you did to me back in September to Moony so that he can see the floating green diamonds and things? It might help him relate to your story a bit easier."

"I guess, I could… if Remus really wants me to add him to my Friend List," Harry slowly replied as he opened his Menu once more before he glanced over the top of the partially transparent pages to meet Remus's gaze.

"I don't think that will be a problem as I'd very much like to be your friend, James."

Harry nodded and sent the friend request to the man before he got up and moved over next to Remus in order to walk him through the process like he had the others. This time, his magic had a harder time guiding the other man's magic through the process because the man's magic was more mature than Hermione's, Luna's and Neville's, hadn't been weakened by constant exposure to dementors like Sirius's, and was slightly corrupted due to the curse the man suffered from (not that Harry knew any of that).

Harry's magic, despite being immature, was the stronger magic though and it eventually forced the werewolf curse running through Remus's blood and magic to submit to him as it overwrote the man's magic with Aincrad's coding; inadvertently changing the nature of Remus's curse into something along the lines of an animagus form using what it had learned from Sirius's magic as a blueprint.

When the process was complete, Remus was the second adult converted and Harry's MP Bar had been seriously drained due to the effort it had taken to overcome the werewolf curse (which Harry still wasn't aware of) and wrest control of Remus's magic long enough for the process to be completed. Once it was over, Harry dropped back down into his chair feeling rather tired while Remus analytically explored his new Menu and the abilities that came hand in hand with the three new bars displayed above his head.

Eventually, Sirius pulled Remus away from his research and the two men shifted the conversation to the other topic that they had wished to discuss with Harry; girls. Or rather, they gave him the not so quick and dirty run down on the basic (and in some cases the not so basic) differences between girls and boys along with an overview of sex. It was one of the most mortifying lessons Harry had ever been given and what made it worse, in Harry's mind, was the fact that the two men constantly used Harry, Neville, Hermione, and Luna in their examples. It would be days before Harry could look either girl in the eye (or anywhere else) without turning beat red.

It wouldn't be until the next full moon that Remus and Sirius discovered that Remus's fury-little-problem was a thing of the past; something that completely baffled both men as they had no clue as to how that was even possible, what was responsible for the change, or when exactly it had happened other than sometime after the previous full moon.

* * *

_Thursday, November 21, 2024 11:55 AM_

"Mr. Potter, I'd like to have a word with you," Professor Moody called out as the class packed up their things and headed for the door.

Harry frowned as he glanced back towards the gnarled old wizard as he tried to think of anything he might have done to warrant being called out by the man but came up with a blank. Knowing he'd only get in trouble for ignoring the man outright, even though Harry couldn't stand the man, he acquiesced and stepped to one side as the rest of the fourth year class filtered out of the room.

"I'll take Mendou with me and save you a seat in the Great Hall, James," Hermione promised as she collected Mendou's lead rope from Harry, dropped the Playpen Ward, and headed off to the lunch with the winged colt reluctantly following her out of the room.

"Thanks, Hermione; I'll be there as soon as I can," Harry replied as he watched her go with mixed feelings; he'd been feeling rather skittish around her and Luna both ever since Sirius and Remus had pulled him aside in order to give him 'the talk' the weekend before last. Sighing, the fourteen year old turned back to the wizard watching him from the front of the room and asked, "You wanted to see me, Professor Moody?"

"I was wondering if you've managed to discover what the first task involves yet," Professor Moody fished as he watched Harry closely out of his one eye (the man still had not replaced or repaired his other eye).

"We were told the task was designed to test our courage in the face of the unknown."

"Well, that's true enough I suppose but aren't you even the least bit curious about what it is you're going to face this weekend? I would be happy to give you a few hints if you need them."

"Professor, with all due respect, I'm not allowed to ask or accept help from you or any of my other professors," Harry stated as he frowned at the professor.

"Do you think the other champions are going to be bothered with little things like the rules? Cheating is expected and encouraged; so long as you don't get caught. And seeing as how you're the current underdog in this Tournament it stands to reason that you could use all the help you can get in order to have a chance at winning. You don't have to worry about me telling anyone, if that's what you're worried about."

"Thank you but no thank you, Professor Moody. I neither need nor want the help and I refuse to cheat," Harry firmly stated as he walked backwards until he reached the door; the teen unwilling to turn his back on the man. "I entered the Tournament knowing full well what I would potentially face during the course of the Tournament and I can win on my own merits."

Harry ducked out of the classroom a split second later and slowly made his way down to the entrance hall; feeling highly uncomfortable with the entire encounter. He was also more than a little angry that the man seemed to think that Harry didn't have a chance of winning the Tournament without cheating. Harry knew his chances of winning were just as high as those of the other two champions; if not higher based upon his experiences of the past three years and his experiences in SAO.

He reached the Great Hall about eight minutes later and made a beeline for the end of the Gryffindor table where the others were already seated; Mendoukusei's continued presence guaranteed that their group was consistently allowed to take those seats due to the winged horse's tendency to steal food from the plates of anyone not paying attention now that he was old enough to eat things other than mare's milk. He dropped down beside Hermione with a soft grunt and discreetly used the wide area version of the Muffliato spell to prevent anyone from listening into their conversation (knowing Hermione at least would want to know why Moody had held him back); the stunted teen troubled enough to worry about someone hearing something they shouldn't.

Hermione flashed him a smile and poured him a glass of pumpkin juice as she asked, "So, what did Professor Moody want to talk to you about?"

"He offered to help me with the first task," Harry revealed after he began filling his plate.

"What!? But that's cheating… and it's against the rules! Why would he do that? You didn't accept, did you? What if it was just a test to see if you'd resort to cheating?"

"Relax, Hermione, you and I both know that James doesn't like cheaters and he's far too stubborn to accept anyone's help when it comes to breaking rules," Neville insisted with a shake of his head.

"Besides, I don't need any help," Harry stated with confidence.

"Why do you think he was so eager to help you though?"

"I don't know. He seemed to think that I would welcome the help so that I could win the Tournament because I was the quote obvious underdog unquote. I don't think he was pleased that I turned him down flat. I don't like that he was offering to give me help when I know for a fact that he's still upset with me about his magical eye getting cracked. He never did give me a detention for what happened that day nor did he deduct any points."

"Are you going to talk to Sirius about what happened?" Neville asked after the three of them spent a few minutes eating and thinking about Harry's observations.

"Yes; I'll talk to him about it tonight after supper."

Nothing more was said about the matter and Harry ended the spell he'd cast as they finished their meal and left to attend their afternoon classes; all three of them waving to Luna on their way out. The conversation he had later that night with Sirius about Moody's motives didn't really shed any light on why the one-eyed man would offer to help Harry cheat unless he hoped to get the teen disqualified in retaliation for his eye being destroyed.

Sirius was far more concerned about Karkaroff being on the castle grounds; the man was a known Death Eater that had escaped prison by ratting out a number of his fellow Death Eaters. Rookwood's name came up a time or two during the conversation as well since the escaped Death Eater was still at large. It went without saying that Harry went to bed troubled that night after that less than satisfying discussion.

Friday seemed to crawl by as most of the students grew restless in anticipation of the First Task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament taking place the next day. A number of the students were even taking bets on which one of the champions would win the task with Harry being the least favored; most of Hogwarts still upset that he'd been chosen as champion in the first place and the other two schools supporting their own champions. The negative attention didn't really bother Harry all that much; he'd never really cared what any of the other students thought about him.

* * *

**Notes:**

Conjured popcorn – okay, I can hear a few canon sticklers complaining about me allowing Mendou to eat 'conjured popcorn' in this chapter so I thought I'd explain my reasoning behind this. To start, I don't see conjured food as true conjuration; I see it as a more advanced form of the summoning spell that calls forth the food from the nearest source. In this case, the popcorn would have come from the Hogwarts kitchen supplies. A canon example of this spell would be when Mrs. Weasley was conjuring soup or sauce or something from her wand one of the times Harry was at the Burrow during the summer – the spell at that time pulling the ingredients to make whatever she was conjuring from her wand from the supplies in her kitchen.

Theoretically, the spell could pull the food from anywhere (including the environment or a store shelf) but I'm going with the assumption that most people only conjure food that way if they have recently purchased said food or grow it in their gardens because there are laws against stealing food in the magical world. Something that would be hard to police and would require people to actually police themselves – much like the registration of an animagus form. I won't say the thefts don't happen but for the most part people are law abiding.

Please don't ask me why Hermione, Ron, and Harry didn't use such food conjuration in Deathly Hallows if it was possible, because I can't answer that since I didn't write DH. (If I had written DH, it would have ended _much_ differently and the Epilogue of book seven would have never happened.) For all I know, food conjuration could be something they don't teach at Hogwarts until their seventh year (which they skipped) if at all or that they are the kind of spells that are only taught from mother to daughter or something… Feel free to speculate all you want. =)

* * *

**AN:** _And we see Dumbledore again being taken to task for the way he has handled Harry with McGonagall once again sticking up for her littlest lion. Ollivander's reaction to Harry's wand and the whole thing with Moody's eye not being replaced or repaired will be explained later in the story. I think that covers pretty much everything… if not, I'm sure it will be covered at some point in the story (just like everything else – *smirks*). ~ Jenn_

**10-11-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	32. Dragons

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Two: Dragons

_Saturday, November 23, 2024 1:00 PM_

Harry slipped into the tent with the other champions and made his way into the corner where the shadows were deepest in order to avoid Rita Skeeter when he saw her hovering about inside the tent. Despite the reporter's presence, he was looking forward to facing one or more of the Dragons (if they were actually part of the first task) and wondered just what the task would entail.

Sirius and Remus were both up in the stands alongside Harry's friends so they could watch the task; the two men had snuck out earlier that morning before openly returning to the castle so that they could hang out with Harry prior to the task. Orsus and Caleo would also be watching Harry compete; the two young hunters had taken up sentry near the ground level entrance to the stands where they would be safe from the Dragons or potential spellfire but have a clear view of the entire stadium floor where the task would take place. And Mendoukusei had been left down in the Garden Chamber with his elves watching over him so that there was no danger of the winged colt getting eaten by one of the dragons or injured by whatever the task entailed.

"Wonderful, every one is already here," Mr. Bagman crowed joyfully as he ducked into the tent and noted that all three champions were present. "It is almost time for the first task to start. In order to complete the task, you are required to collect the golden egg from your opponent. In just a few moments, once the last of the stragglers have claimed their seats, the task will start but first you'll be selecting your opponent from this sack." Mr. Bagman held up the bag he'd been holding before he glanced down at his watch to check the time. "Now, are there any questions? No? Perfect, everyone gather close. Miss Delacour, if you'll be so kind as to draw first?"

The three champions moved closer to the man and the French witch daintily reached into the bag and pulled out a small working model of a Welsh Green that had a small chain around its neck with the number two painted upon the small pendant tag. Krum went next and pulled out a Swedish Short-Snout model wearing the number one. Harry then stepped forward to take the third and final model from the sack; this one of a Chinese Fireball with the number three dangling from its neck. The small scarlet and gold model growled and snarled as it squirmed in Harry's grip and Harry smirked down at the fierce looking Dragon.

"The order in which you will face your opponents is determined by the number of the dragon you drew. I'll remind you that your task is only to retrieve the golden egg and that you are to avoid damaging the real eggs or permanently harming your opponent during the retrieval. Mr. Krum, when you hear the first whistle sounds; that is your signal to make your way out into the area. Good luck."

Mr. Bagman darted out of the tent just seconds later in order to start the first task with a disappointed Skeeter (because she'd missed a chance to catch Harry alone) chasing after him; leaving the three champions alone as they waited for the task to start. A few minutes later, the three of them heard Bagman's voice announcing the task before the shrill sound of a loud whistle cut through the air and Krum left the tent.

Harry gave the growling figurine in his hand a final glance before he tucked it into his Inventory and began stretching in preparation for his turn. He studiously ignored the screams, cries, and groans that the audience gave off as Krum faced his dragon in sync with the loud blow by blow commentary that Bagman was giving throughout the entire ordeal. Harry glanced over at the only witch competing and noticed that Delacour looked quite pale despite the fact that she had drawn the smallest and least menacing Dragon out of those that had been brought for the task.

Harry wondered why she was so worried since it wasn't like any of them actually had to battle the Dragons head on (much to his disappointment); they just had to steal an egg from them. After a while, Harry put the witch's fear out of his mind as he concentrated on the various strategies he knew would work against any Dragon. Twenty-two minutes later, Delacour was called out of the tent to face her Dragon. It took the French witch almost the same amount of time to collect her egg as it had taken the Bulgarian seeker and then it was Harry's turn to go next and Harry moved over to stand beside the exit.

In no time at all, the final whistle sounded and Harry pushed his way out of the tent and walked the short distance down to the arena. He paused just on the rim of rocks that made up the walls of the arena and stared down into the pit where the Chinese Fireball had been chained up on the far side with her nest tucked beneath her belly. Like the small model he'd pulled from the bag, the mother Dragon was more than a little angry. Harry didn't blame her; he'd be angry to if someone had dragged him thousands of miles away and manhandled his unborn children on top of dropping him into another dragon's territory.

"And now we have our third and final champion; Harry Potter. Will the shortest and youngest champion competing in the Tournament be able to complete the challenge in twenty-five minutes or less like his competition or is young Potter doomed to trail after those who came before him?" Mr. Bagman's voice called out as the Fireball unleashed a billowing cloud of flames.

Harry barely restrained the urge to flip the announcer off for bringing up his height and using his first name but chose instead to ignore the man; annoying the man wasn't worth the effort it would require. He took a moment to study the layout of the boulders scattered through the floor of the arena in order to find a clear shot between his end of the ring and the Dragon's nest before he drew his wand and launched a Fire Burst Spell into the air just a few feet above the Dragon's nose.

The spell created a large burst of flames that appeared directly over top of the Dragon and the angry mother roared out her defiance as she rose up onto her hind legs to breathe another blast of flames at what she thought was a threat to her nest. Harry, in the mean time, tucked his wand back into his Inventory as he jumped down into the arena now that the Dragon's attention was elsewhere. At the same time, he used his SAO Magic to manipulate the flames of his spell in order to keep them burning so that the Dragon didn't turn her attention earthward any time soon.

"My word, ladies and gentlemen, Potter is no longer in possession of his wand as he enters the arena! What is the lad thinking? Is our youngest champion suicidal?"

Harry snorted and shook his head; he wouldn't need his wand for this task now that the dragon was occupied. Trotting across the field, Harry lined himself up with the dragon's nest. The moment he had a clear shot and the mother's body was not blocking the nest, Harry rose up on the balls of his feet and shot across the distance separating him from his goal in the blink of an eye using Sprint. He came to a stop right beside the nest and quickly plucked the golden egg from amidst the crimson and gold speckled eggs that belonged to the mother dragon. Harry then used Sprint to return to his point of origin and promptly held up the golden egg for everyone to see even as he let the flames of his spell die out.

"Unbelievable, ladies and gentlemen, our third champion has already claimed his egg! Did anyone actually see Mr. Potter move? In all my years I don't think I've ever seen anything so startling! Mr. Potter flickered and in the blink of an eye he'd obtained his egg without using his wand! He's also set a new record for the first task; completing the goal in less than five minutes! A most impressive display from our youngest champion. I'm certain I'm not alone in saying I'd dearly love to know what spell he used to accomplish the feat."

Harry quickly made his way out of the arena with the heavy gold egg tucked beneath his arm in order to avoid angering the mother Dragon further. As much as he'd love to actually fight her, he knew now was not the time. By the time he reached the rim of the area, the judges had finished rating his performance; he ended up with a score of forty-six out of fifty points possible due to how quickly he'd gathered his egg, the fact that he'd not been injured, and because neither the dragon nor her eggs had been harmed. Harry then bowed to the judges and sent the egg to his Inventory before he made his way to the medical tent where he'd been told to wait for the judges with the other champions so that they could be given information about the second task.

"Did you quit?" Miss Delacour asked in a haughty tone as he stepped into the tent. "I expected you to fail given your age but I did not expect you to be a coward. It is a disgrace zat zey allowed such a weak leetle wizard like you to compete."

"Actually, I collected my egg in less than five minutes after I used a Fire Burst Spell to distract the Dragon," Harry countered without bothering to glance in her direction. "I would have preferred being allowed to fight the Dragon rather than just steal from her but rules are rules and I had no wish to be penalized for killing a nesting mother."

"Hah, a leetle boy like you, kill a fully grown dragon? Don't make me laugh."

"I killed seven Dragons before I ever set foot in this cursed castle but I could care less whether or not an ugly hag like you believes me or not."

The witch spluttered indignantly over the insult but Harry kept his back on her as he crossed the tent to get as far away from her as possible. He was stopped halfway across the room when he was waylaid by Madam Pomfrey.

"Stand still so that I can see how seriously you injured yourself this time, Mr. Potter," Madam Pomfrey briskly instructed as she waved his wand over him. She frowned for a moment and scanned him a second time. "How did you manage to face a dragon and not come out injured?"

"I ran, really fast," Harry quipped dryly as he walked away from the confused healer. "I've spent more than enough time at your less than tender mercy and wished to avoid the Hospital Wing as long as possible this year."

"Impertinent little brat," Madam Pomfrey huffed as she bustled off in the opposite direction now that she knew Harry was unharmed.

"I wish people would stop taking perverse pleasure in picking on my lack of height; it's bad enough I stopped growing the moment I entered Aincrad five years ago without people constantly reminding me that I'm stuck at four foot f…"

"Kindly refrain from finishing that sentence, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall interrupted with a stern glare as she stepped into the tent in time to catch the end of Harry's short rant.

Harry just shrugged unrepentantly; his height only bothered him because it was the first thing people always commented on and was usually immediately followed by a remark about the terrible scars that marred his face. He then crossed his arms and leaned back against the fabric wall in the corner of the tent he'd retreated into while he waited for the Tournament Officials to arrive to debrief them about the second task. He didn't have very long to wait as the three school heads entered the tent practically on Professor McGonagall's heels along with the Ministry representatives that were on the judging panel for the Tournament.

"Congratulations on completing your first work! Excellent job, everyone!" Mr. Bagman declared as he all but bounced into the tent wearing a wide grin. "An excellent show and a most impressive demonstration of your skills and talent."

"If you can focus on the matter at hand, Ludo? I don't have all day," Bartemius Crouch Sr. impatiently stated as he frowned at the man.

"Alright, alright, Barty, keep your robes on; I was getting there," Mr. Bagman replied in a conciliatory tone. "As I was saying, congratulations on completing the first task; the eggs you retrieved are yours to keep and they hold a clue to your next challenge. You will have until February twenty-first in order to solve the clue as the Second Task will take place at nine-thirty on the twenty-second. Once again, champions are not permitted to seek or accept help from their professors for the task. Good luck."

Harry waited around for full minute before he left to hunt down his four-legged brothers and his companions. He'd barely set foot outside the tent when he was nearly bowled over by Hermione as the bushy haired witch threw her arms around him as she hugged him tightly. Harry was uncertain on whether or not he should feel uncomfortable over the way his face ended up pressed against her developing chest because of their difference in height. Before he could make up his mind, he felt a second pair of arms wrap around him from behind as Luna joined in the hug; the blonde pressing her slightly less-developed chest against the back of his head.

His face was bright red by the time both girls let him go as he could clearly hear both Sirius and Remus laughing at him and he just knew they were going to tease him mercilessly over the rest of the weekend. Harry's embarrassment faded rather quickly as his herd brothers trotted up to congratulate him on his display of speed and courage in the face of an angry dragon. Neville verbally congratulated him next before Fred and George playfully hugged Harry repeatedly as they tried to get his face to turn red like it had when the girls had hugged him but then laughingly stopped when Harry threatened to hex them in tender places.

After another few minutes, the group soon migrated towards the Forbidden Forest to spend the rest of the day and the rest of the weekend beneath the trees. Fred and George split off before they reached the forest, the two older boys leaving to join in the party that Gryffindor would be throwing that night to celebrate Harry's completion of the First Task while taking first place (they were actually far more worried about collecting the money they were owed due to them being some of the few people that bet on Harry instead of one of the other champions).

Tizzy would deliver Mendou to Harry's side the moment they stepped into the forest and the young colt knocked Harry off his feet twice before Harry could get him to settle down; the colt still disliked being separated from Harry's side even if he wasn't quite as dependent as he'd been when Harry first rescued him. As they headed deeper into the forest, Hermione provided Harry with a detailed outline of just what Krum and Delacour had done during their turns.

Krum had actually ended up with the lowest score because he'd used a spell on his dragon's eyes and she'd crushed most of her clutch when she'd thrashed around in anger and pain; Krum had also been injured when he'd dashed in to grab his egg. Fleur on the other hand had used a spell to put her dragon to sleep and ended up getting burned when the dragon woke up and attacked her just as she was walking away with her egg. Hermione had then complained for five minutes straight about how she had not been able to see how Harry had managed to grab his egg so quickly.

Harry just shook his head and told her that whole the point of the Sprint Skill was to move as quickly as possible without being seen. Hermione pouted a bit but soon began firing questions at Harry about what other skills he had and if it was possible for her to learn any of them. The two of them would walk side by side lost in their own world for close to an hour as they poured over their open Player Menus in an effort to determine if any of those in MaM could learn any of the SAO Skills that were available. Their discussion was interrupted when Luna dragged Hermione off to play with a small flock of Flutterby Fairies that were out harvesting pollen and seeds from the season's last flowers.

Neville and Harry were soon roped into helping the girls capture a few of the smaller butterfly-winged fairies in order to move them down into the Garden Chamber where they'd have a better chance of surviving the winter. The fairies were actually quite willing to allow themselves to be captured as soon as they noticed the large amount of berries, nuts, seeds, and flowers (most of which had been taken from both boys' Inventories) that Harry and Neville put into the large flasks Harry had been carrying in his Inventory. A quick call to Winky once the girls thought they'd collected all of the fairies that could benefit from living in a year-round garden saw the ten flasks being taken back to the underground chamber where the fairies would be set free in the garden.

Shortly after that, the two centaurs and six humans found a place to make camp for the night and quickly set about starting a small fire, making supper, setting up a place to sleep, and placing wards and traps around the edge of the camp to prevent trouble from disrupting them. After the meal, Orsus took out a pan flute and began piping out a lively tune while Caleo dug out several bottles of nettle wine that he passed around. It only took a few drinks of wine for Harry to find the courage to get up and dance with his brothers around the fire with Mendoukusei frolicking alongside of him.

Luna was the first of the others to work up the courage to ask Harry to teach her how to dance like him and he readily complied as any shyness he would have felt in doing so had fled with the presence of the mild (by human standards) alcohol in his system. Sirius would then push Hermione and Neville out into the fire light just a few minutes later and Luna grabbed Neville's hand to help him learn the steps while Harry found himself standing in front of Hermione. His heart flipped when she gave him a shy smile as she blushed when he took her hand to lead her through the steps of the dance.

The four teens would dance, sing, and drink sparingly of the centaurian wine for the next three hours when the peace of their small camp was split by the roar of an angry Dragon and the sudden explosion of a forest fire fairly close to where they'd set up camp; the Swedish Short-Snout had gone on the rampage in her grief over the loss of more than half her clutch.

"Orsus, you have to warn the village; she's headed right for it!" Harry ordered as he pulled his broom and his Diamond Wire from his Inventory. "Sirius, you and Remus need to teach the others how to conjure water and help Caleo contain the fire before it spreads too far."

"What are you going to do?" Hermione worried demanded as Harry mounted his broom.

"I'm going to put the Dragon down and protect my herd as a centaur warrior is supposed to," Harry answered without looking at the witch. "Please call Dobby and have him take Mendou back to the garden where he'll be safe."

Harry was in the air seconds later and activated his Night Vision as he aimed his broom straight for the raging Short-Snout. As he rushed towards the Dragon, another blast of flames blossomed from the Dragon's mouth and Harry cursed as another section of forest exploded into fire. Pressing himself closer to the broom handle in order to gain more speed, Harry blindly began tying the knots he'd need to form a net trap out of the Diamond Wire; he had to ground the Dragon before she reached the village.

In Harry's mind, it took him far too long to catch up to the angry Dragon as she'd set another two sections of the forest on fire in the time it took for him to reach her. The moment he did catch up to her, she spotted him out of the corner of her eye before he could tangle up either of her wings and Harry was forced to play a deadly game of tag miles above the forest as he sought to keep her focused on him while trying to get close enough to use his nets. The long hours he'd put in dodging bludgers and hexes with Sirius and Remus really paid off in that moment as he dodged teeth, claws, tail, and flames in a series of death defying acrobatic stunts that went unseen and unappreciated.

Harry reveled in every minute of the deadly dance even as he sought to close on the Dragon as quickly as possible.

Eventually, Harry was able to snag one of the Dragon's wings in the Diamond Wire and he immediately let go of the net trap before the Dragon could yank him down to the earth with her as she plummeted out of the sky and crashed heavily into the forest below. Harry's hands were already moving again as he made yet another net (to tangle up the second wing in case she freed the first) as he followed her down. The pint sized teen was forced to dodge flying trees and dragon flame as the Dragon continued to rage on regardless of her tangled wing or the injuries she'd received when she'd crashed.

Despite the fact that it had been over three years since he'd last faced a Dragon, Harry had no trouble falling back into old habits now that he had the Dragon on the ground and it took less then ten minutes for him to tangle up the Dragon's second wing along with one of her legs. He was down on the ground and discarding his broom just seconds later as he pulled out more wire, his dirk, and his battered dragon-scale shield. His next target was her mouth in order to hinder her ability to fire flames or snap at him with her teeth.

An hour and thirty-five minutes after their private celebration had been crashed by the rampaging Dragon, Harry called down the lighting in three consecutive and powerful blasts and the Dragon shattered in death. The fourteen year old dropped to his knees once it was over; calling the lightning still took far too much out of him (both his HP and MP bars dropping well below the halfway mark). Harry didn't have time to sit and recover though, several parts of the forest were burning and he had to help put it out before it spread even further.

Two minutes after he'd finished off the Dragon, Harry was back up in the air using his control over the elements to call up a rain storm while at the same time using his wand to conjure a steady stream of water as he flew back and forth over the forest drenching any flame he passed over; no matter how small. It wasn't long until Harry noticed half a dozen other wizards up on broom putting out the flames and he eventually learned that they were the Dragon Handlers that had come with the Dragons. They'd been too busy calming the two remaining Dragons and putting out the fires near the Dragon pen to give chase to the Shout-Snout after she broke free of her chains.

Harry couldn't fault them for their logic; three rampaging Dragons would have been near impossible to stop before they'd destroyed the entire forest. He also couldn't help but be angry with them because their negligence in subduing the Short-Snout before she broke free had put the herd in mortal peril. The teen ended up getting into a screaming match with the senior handler when the man learned that the Short-Snout was dead. Harry got up right in the man's face and verbally cut him down six ways from Sunday as he told the man everything he'd done wrong that night after hitting him with a Lip-Trap (Harry's favorite Weasley made prank product).

Just before Harry left, he told the man they had until dawn to get the other two Dragons out of their forest because the herd would be going Dragon hunting come morning in order to protect their home from further damage because he didn't trust them to do their jobs properly.

Harry's first stop after leaving the Dragon Handlers was the herd's village to make certain the village hadn't suffered any damage and that none of the Centaurs had been harmed. When he landed, it was to find the village completely deserted; the elders, yearlings, and foals had disappeared into the tunnel network attached to the Garden Chamber and the rest of the adults had headed into the forest to fight the fires and rescue the animals that had been caught in the disaster. Harry stayed just long enough to make certain the village would be safe from the handful of scattered forest fires that continued to burn unchecked but for the on-going storm he'd conjured before he took to the sky once more and began searching for one of his brothers or his adopted sire.

He found Bane and Ronan first and dropped down to exchange news with them; Harry was quick to let the two Centaurs know that he'd dealt with the rampaging Dragon and had a confrontation with the Dragon Handlers and the two Centaurs informed him that the Thestral herd had taken some heavy losses as their shadowed clearing had taken a direct hit. Harry offered to inform Hagrid so that the groundskeeper could help tend the domesticated herd (which was where the two Centaurs were headed when Harry found them). Bane in return promised to pass along the update Harry had given them to Magorian and Firenze (to save Harry from having to track down the leader of the herd and his sire to give his report).

Harry actually found Hagrid already inside of the forest; the large man had seen the Short-Snout rampaging and knew that there would have been injuries and casualties in the wake of the Dragon's rampage. Harry used Teleport to take Hagrid directly to the Thestral's clearing; it being far more important to get the animals the attention they needed than it was to hide his ability to travel through the wards of the school. After dropping Hagrid off, Harry took to the air once more and began searching for Caleo (and therefore the human companions he'd brought into the forest).

When he found them, he also found Willow; his adoptive mother treating injured unicorns while the others pulled the injured creatures out from under the wreckage of partially burnt trees. Those animals that had already been treated were being transported to the Garden by Winky and Dobby (leaving Tizzy and the Centaurs that had taken refuge in the tunnels to tend to those already in the Chamber). Harry didn't hesitate to drop down off his broom and lend a hand as he filled them in on the fate of the Dragon, the village, the remaining two Dragons, the Thestrals, and the status of the numerous forest fires that had been started.

Harry would spend the rest of the night fetching supplies for his herd mother, helping to hunt down injured creatures, and occasionally Teleporting to points all over the forest as he took it upon himself to make certain that everyone knew what was going on. Despite the fact that he was utterly exhausted come morning, Harry and ten of the herd's fiercest warriors turned up at the Dragon pen as promised to find all of the Dragon Handlers and both remaining mother Dragons gone. Harry was secretly glad the wizards had listened to him; he was in no condition to face another two Dragons after the long night.

The Centaurs left Harry with a guard of four while the rest of the hunters returned to inform Magorian of the wizards' retreat. Harry in the mean time worked alongside the four Centaurs to clear away the messes the wizards had left behind in their hurry to leave before dawn. It was while Harry was salvaging a charmed tarp that he found the two surviving eggs from the Short-Snout's clutch; the Handlers had either forgotten about them or they'd left them behind on purpose. Harry believed it to be the latter because it was a well known fact that no Dragon would foster another Dragon's eggs so the eggs were as good as dead anyway.

(Few reserves had the money to build the facilities to hatch and raise abandoned clutches due to the large number of Dragons they dealt with all of the time; the only exception being for those breeds that were on the brink of extinction – which the Short-Snout was not.)

Harry picked up both eggs knowing that Hagrid would love a chance to raise another Dragon or two.

Once the Dragon pen had been cleared up so that all evidence that the Dragons had even been there was gone (bar the burnt remains of numerous trees), Harry and the others headed back towards the village. As they traveled, the group swept the surrounding forest for signs of dead, dying, injured, and trapped creatures as they followed the wide swath of destruction that the Short-Snout had left in her wake the night before. They collected the dead, put the dying out of their misery, sent the injured with an elf to be healed, and freed the rest.

Harry's Listening, Tracking, Searching, and Detection Skills were invaluable in their efforts to find those creatures that needed their help; the teen finding those that were buried so deeply they would have been missed if he hadn't heard their heartbeats and ragged breathing or followed their fading tracks. The four Centaurs, on the other hand, did the bulk of the heavy lifting and digging to free the creatures they came across as Harry was too exhausted to use his magic for more than locating those creatures that needed their help.

By the time they returned to the village just before sunset, Harry had passed out from exhaustion and had had to be carried the rest of the way to the village by one of the others.

Harry reluctantly made his way back to the castle bright and early the next morning; the teen hated that he wouldn't be allowed to help the Centaurs continue sweeping the forest for those creatures that would need their help. His magical reserves were still dangerously low after facing the dragon, putting out the fires, and helping the centaurs rescue various animals during a thirty-six hour period though and he had classes to attend. Hermione, Neville, and Luna were nearly just as exhausted, though they'd taken the time to nap two or three times Saturday night and over the course of Sunday whereas Harry had refused to stop working right up until he passed out.

Each afternoon for the next week, directly after their last class of the day, Harry and his three closest friends (though he only called them that in the privacy of his own mind for now) would disappear down into the Garden Chamber to help take care of the injured animals that were taking refuge in the chambers. There wasn't much that Harry could do physically or magically during that time (because he himself was still recovering from his extreme exhaustion) but he could and did see to it that food, medicine, and bandages were purchased in large quantities; paying for everything out of his vault through elf correspondence.

Food was doubly important as large swathes of the forest had been destroyed (along with a number of creatures' main food sources and homes) by the fires. The Centaurs were prepared for the hardships thanks to the warnings they'd been given by the stars and Harry's help (both in the form of added supplies that he helped to gather and the Bags of Holding that he'd given the herd). Temporary homes were at least plentiful in the large network of tunnels that branched out from the Garden Chamber; more than enough for each of the different species that had been left homeless because of the fires to each have their own little refuge to avoid over crowding and feeding frenzies (predators being given the same consideration as their prey as they too had been left homeless).

To cope with the sheer volume of work to be done, Tizzy had recruited a dozen of the younger Hogwarts elves to help with the cleaning and feeding (at Harry's suggestion and with Professor McGonagall's permission). Harry's three elves didn't mind the extra help as there was more than enough work for all of the elves. The Centaurs appreciated the help as the elves saved them a considerable amount of work as it was their duty, as the guardians of the forest, to protect all of the creatures that lived inside of the forest; and with the elves feeding all of the creatures and cleaning up after them, it allowed the Centaurs to focus on tending to the wounded and searching the forest for other survivors.

Professor McGonagall, after visiting the Garden turned field hospital, gave her permission for the four children to extend the length of time they had been given to sleep down in the Chamber providing Sirius and Remus continued to stick around as chaperons. Additionally, Hagrid, as the school's groundskeeper, was given access to the tunnel network (but not the inner chambers) so that he could help care for those creatures that weren't seriously injured as they were moved to the outer tunnels.

Elf wards would keep the man from moving too deeply into the maze of tunnels as while Harry tolerated and mostly liked the large man, he knew Hagrid was far too close to Dumbledore and not exactly the best at keeping secrets. And Harry in no way wanted Dumbledore to learn about the other entrances into the Garden Chamber so long as Harry was using it as a refuge. He just didn't trust the man not to use such knowledge to permanently bar him from the underground chamber.

Three nights after the Short-Snout's rampage, Harry checked on Hedwig to discover that she'd laid a clutch of eight unfertilized eggs (there being no male occamies in the area for her to mate with). She wouldn't allow Harry to touch the eggs until a week later when she abandoned the nest completely (once it was obvious that the eggs were dead). Harry collected the eggs knowing that they were both highly sought after for their shells (which were made out of a substance that greatly resembled silver) and used in a number of rare potions.

It wasn't until the thirtieth of November that Harry was reminded of the Golden Egg he'd claimed from the First Task of the Tournament when Hermione asked him if he'd spent any time trying to figure out the clue. The slightly older teen would then spend the rest of the weekend helping Harry solve the Egg's clue; they would succeed on the night of December second after classes and Harry silently worried about how he'd complete the task because he didn't actually know how to swim.

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**10-11-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.  
_**10-16-15:** _Corrected a small mistake in the numbering of champions that was pointed out to me by reader._


	33. Dancing

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Thirty-Three: Dancing

_December 09, 2024 through December 25, 2024_

Harry stared at Professor McGonagall in disbelief for a full minute as he tried to comprehend exactly what it was she'd just told him. No where in Tournament Rules had he found any mention of being required to dance with a girl in front of the entire school. And yet, according to what his Head of House had just told him, as one of the Tournament Champions, he was required to have a date for the Yule Ball and he would be required to open the dancing alongside of the other two champions.

He eventually nodded his understanding and walked out of the Transfiguration Classroom feeling rather numb as he tried to figure out how he was going to ask some girl to go to a dance with him. He found Hermione and Neville waiting for him right outside of the classroom. Neville looked a little green around the gills at the very idea of asking a girl to dance (the Yule Ball had been announced in front of the entire class at the end of the day's lesson before Professor McGonagall had held Harry back to inform him of his duties as a champion) while Hermione was blushing lightly as she occasionally cast hopeful glances in his direction.

Harry nearly tripped over his feet when he was abruptly reminded that Hermione was a girl and one of the only two girls in the entire school that he usually felt comfortable around (the other being Luna). That reminder immediately brought to mind the talk that Remus and Sirius had had with him about girls and his face warmed up with embarrassment in response to that particular memory.

"What did Professor McGonagall need to talk to you about?" Hermione asked a few minutes later as they headed to the Great Hall for supper.

"To tell me that I have to have a date for the Yule Ball because I will have to open the dancing alongside of the other champions," Harry replied as he frowned a bit; his embarrassment fading in the face of his discomfort over the news about his responsibilities during the Yule Ball.

"Good luck, mate; it was nice knowing you," Neville quipped while wearing a forced grin. "The moment word gets out that you have to have a date for the dance, the girls are going to start flocking to you in the hopes that you will ask one of them to go with you."

"Bugger that; I'm not going to take some random person I don't know," Harry muttered as he scowled at the mere thought of being pestered by a bunch of girls.

He then cast a sideways glance at Hermione as he considered the chances that she'd be willing to go with him if he asked her. Just as they reached the Great Hall, Harry slowed to a stop as he tried to think of any reason why he shouldn't ask her while Neville and Hermione stopped the moment they realized he was no longer beside them and glanced back at him in confusion. Once he decided that no, there was no reason _not_ to ask Hermione (and knowing that Luna had been making plans to go on holiday with her father), Harry glanced up at the young lady in question as he unconsciously stood up straighter.

"Hermione, will you be staying at Hogwarts for the winter holidays this year?" Harry inquired as those people sitting close enough to the Great Hall's entrance to hear his question fell silent and turned to watch the unfolding scene.

"Yes, I am hoping to attend the ball since I've never been to a proper dance before," Hermione replied as her earlier blush returned.

"I know we just learned about the ball but has any one asked you to be their date yet?"

"No, no one has asked me yet."

"Hermione, would you consider going to the ball with me as my date? If I have to have a date, then I'd prefer to go with a… a friend rather than go with someone I don't know. Unless you'd prefer to go with Neville; I know he was your friend long before you and I ever met."

Hermione glanced between the two boys as she chewed on her lip for a moment before she took a deep breath and met Harry's steady gaze as she replied, "Yes, I'll be your date for the ball, James."

Harry blinked in disbelief a couple of times before he gave Hermione a rare smile as he said, "Thank you."

"That is so not fair; you made it look so easy to ask a girl out," Neville groused as the three of them finally started walking again; none of them realizing just how many people had watched Harry asking Hermione out.

"No, asking Hermione was easy," Harry corrected as he slid into his seat. "I wouldn't have been able to walk up to a girl I didn't know and ask her to be my date without feeling like an idiot. I hope you're not mad at me for asking Hermione first; I probably should have asked you if you were going to ask her before I asked her but I didn't want to wait too long because someone else might have asked her first."

"No, I'm not mad. Hermione would have been the first girl I would have asked if I ever got the courage to ask someone but I'm still worried about stepping on toes; I don't know how to dance."

Harry froze with one hand on the bowl of mashed potatoes he'd been picking up so he could serve himself as it suddenly occurred to him that he had no clue as to how to dance outside of what the centaurs had taught him and somehow he didn't think any of those dances would be appropriate to perform at the Yule Ball. He then realized he had no idea what would be expected of him, or more specifically, what Hermione would expect of him as her date to the ball. He pulled his hand back as his appetite fled as butterflies and knots took up residence inside of his stomach.

"You do know that it's just as hard being the girl and having to wait for a guy to ask you out, don't you?" Hermione inquired in response to the conversation; the witch oblivious to Harry's sudden nervousness. "While boys might be afraid of being turned down, we girls are afraid of never even being asked or of not being asked by the boy we fancy."

"Rejection hurts no matter what form it takes," Luna sagely stated as she paused by their table and studied Harry with sad eyes for a moment.

"Hi, Luna; how was your afternoon?" Hermione asked as she smiled up at the third year.

"It could have been better but I was overlooked."

"Overlooked? How?" Neville asked in confusion as he leaned around Harry to glance at the blonde.

"No one thought to ask me to be their date," Luna replied as she flicked her gaze to Harry once again.

"That's not true, Luna," Harry replied as he picked up on the subtle hints she'd been dropping. "I did consider asking you at the same time as I was considering asking Hermione but I knew that you were making plans to spend the holidays with your father this year. The two of you were the only two girls in the entire school I would have considered asking because the two of you are the only… friends I have here that are girls."

"Do you really mean that? Am I really your friend?"

Harry glanced at the blonde to see hope and fear filling her eyes as she waited for him to answer the question, he then glanced briefly at Hermione and Neville before returning his eyes to Luna as he replied, "Yes; all three of you are my friends. It's just taken me a long time to see that."

"You're forgiven then," Luna declared as she beamed at Harry and leaned down to kiss his check before she headed back to the Ravenclaw table; leaving behind a bright red and very much confused Harry.

"She forgave you for appearing to forget about her," Hermione explained with an amused smile when Harry glanced at her for an explanation.

"Why did she kiss me though?" Harry asked as he craned his head around to glance in Luna's direction for a moment before he turned back around.

"I don't know but if I had to guess, I'd say she kissed you because she was happy that you actually called her your friend for the first time. Come to think of it, today is the first time you called any of us your friends."

Harry shifted uncomfortably as Hermione studied him intently after she pointed out his verbal acceptance of their friendship for the first time. Harry was half tempted to make a strategic withdrawal but knew fleeing at this point would only make Hermione worry about him; which meant she'd be very likely to chase after him. After a moment, he sighed and robotically began dishing up something to eat just so that he'd have something to do with his hands. As he played with the food on his plate and occasionally deigned to eat some of it, Harry made a mental note to ask Sirius for advice on what he should do about both learning how to dance and what would be expected of him on a date.

To Harry's embarrassment, when he did ask Sirius about learning how to dance, the sadistic man promised to give both Harry and Neville lessons and then pulled Hermione and Luna in to help with those lessons. On the plus side, by the time the night of the ball arrived, Harry had grown comfortable enough dancing with both girls that he wouldn't make a spectacle out of himself or his date when it came time for them to open the ball. His quest for advice on what would be his first date was decidedly less embarrassing as Sirius explained courting etiquette to him in more detail than he had during the talk he'd been given the previous month.

Basically, he was told to dance with Hermione at least a couple of times, offer to fetch her refreshments when she was tired between dances, and to avoid paying too much attention to other girls. He then went on to advise him to make certain that Hermione always had a partner for a song if Harry chose to dance with another (since while she was his date she wasn't technically his girlfriend). Sirius also warned him not to grow overly jealous if another boy asked Hermione for a dance and make it a point to let her chose whether or not she wished to accept.

Remus butted in to say that it was fine for him to step in if at any time it looked like Hermione was uncomfortable with another boy since, as her date, it was his duty to make certain she enjoyed the night. The last suggestion that both men made, was for Harry to ask Hermione what color her dress robes were so that he could make certain that his robes wouldn't clash with hers; they could always owl order a new set for him through Madam Malkin's since she had his measurements and the style of the robes he'd purchased on record.

Hermione would reveal that she hadn't purchased her robes prior to the start of term (she had been uncertain of which type of dress robes would be most appropriate at the time since there hadn't been any indication as to what type of event the dress robes would be used for) and she in turn asked Harry about the robes he had purchased. Sirius would then sneak Hermione out of the castle the weekend after Harry asked her to ball so she could visit Madam Malkin's in London in order to solicit the seamstress's help in picking out a set of robes that would best match those that Harry had already purchased.

On Wednesday the eighteenth, Harry watched as Neville was manipulated into asking Hannah Abbott to dance by Susan Bones (Susan being an old friend of Neville's family through his grandmother and her aunt's friendship). He was rather thankful that he hadn't needed someone to prod him into asking Hermione to the dance (if one didn't count the fact that Professor McGonagall had basically ordered him to find a date). He'd been embarrassed enough with the number of girls that had come up to him and flat out asked him to drop Hermione and take them instead.

Harry usually just gave them the blank look he reserved for those people that annoyed him and those that didn't get the hint were then promised a month's worth of humiliating pranks if they dared to ask him a second time. Needless to say, the girls eventually left him alone the moment his threat of endless pranking was passed around to all of the hopeful Potter fans that wished to be in Hermione's shoes.

The Sunday before the Yule Ball saw Neville and Harry picking through the flowers in the garden greenhouses that were still blooming in order to create wrist corsages to give their dates (another one of Remus's suggestions). Harry chose a yellow rosebud that was more of a pale gold in color and surrounded it with a vine of dainty white orchids with pale yellow hearts and two small sections cut from tips of a fern frond; the entire ensemble woven into a spider silk bracelet. Neville, on the either hand, chose to make a white daisy chain with white baby's breath and fern tips (since he had no idea what Hannah's dress robes would look like). Remus would help both boys preserve the corsages with a handful of spells that would prevent the flowers from wilting or falling off and their stems from breaking.

Harry woke up on Christmas morning with his stomach tied in knots now that the day of the ball had arrived. Part of him wondered what in the world he was thinking, so sure that he'd embarrass himself and humiliate Hermione later that night. Another part of him was still wondering why Hermione had ever agreed to go to the ball with him as his date since he knew she could have gone with any one she wanted; even Krum. He probably would have stayed holed up in his room worrying all day long if not for his godfather barging into the room to drag him out to the living room so that everyone could open presents.

This year, Harry put a lot more effort into the gifts he gave out; buying everyone a small amount of their favorite treats in addition to making, buying, or finding them a specialized gift. Luna was given a box of white chocolate and almond snowflake shaped fudge along with a dragon scale pendant in the shape of a snowflake made from the silvery-blue scale of the Frost Dragon (the gifts passed to the petit blonde before she left for the holidays). Neville received a pack of chocolate frogs, a Christmas cactus (a non magical succulent that blooms in late fall and winter), and some of the seeds that the other boy had shown interest in back in September.

Fred and George both got a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and an assortment of items from Harry's Inventory that could they could experiment with for their ever growing list of joke products. Remus received a thick slab of Honeydukes' best chocolate and a couple of old Ravenous Wolf hides he had found in his Inventory (the latter an idea he'd gotten after seeing that Sirius had spelled the 'beware of werewolf' sign to Remus's door in the apartment).

Sirius was given Fizzing Whizbees, Cockroach Clusters, and the last three Wharf Rat hides that Harry had picked up from level thirty-eight in SAO (rat monsters that had been the size of a full-grown cow). And Hermione received a box of Sugar Quills (in assorted colors and flavors) and a three inch tall animated figurine of a winged horse made from frosted crystal and accented with gold that Sirius had helped him pick out from an Owl Order catalog.

Harry, in return, received a handmade friendship bracelet and a package of licorice wands from Luna, a box of cauldron cakes and a book on useful gardening spells from Neville, and a box of homemade pranks from the twins that contained more Lip Traps, their new Reverse Lip Traps (it sealed the target's lips and then spouted off rude limericks or cheesy jokes for an hour), and their newly created Canary Creams and Frog-Breath Fudge. Harry also received a gift from the elder Weasleys (for the fourth Christmas in a row) that contained the usual hand knitted sweater along with a matching scarf and gloves, a homemade quilt with a winged horse and a forest on it, and a box of homemade Christmas sweets.

Remus gave Harry a couple of second hand books on advanced magical theory, a box of assorted chocolate bars, and a set of five leather bound journals that he could use to keep track of all the spells he knew or use as diaries to document his time in Aincrad. From Sirius, Harry received a penknife that could unlock any door, a second hand collection of twenty-five animated creature figurines (which included a graphorn, a dragon, a kelpie, and several other dangerous magical creatures as well as a unicorn, a winged horse, and a griffin), and a case of butterbeer. And Hermione gave Harry an encyclopedia on magical horse breeds and a photo album filled with a large collection photos featuring Harry and Mendou that someone had taken over the past few months.

The other gifts of note that were given, were the 'beware of were-idiot' sign and a quarantine sign declaring a 'were-flea infestation' that Remus stuck on Sirius's door (in retaliation for the 'beware of werewolf' sign), the notebook of prank ideas Sirius gave to the twins (which Harry would only learn about later as they'd stayed up in the Gryffindor Tower with their brother and sister this year), the expensive packet of rare seeds and saplings that Sirius had given to all four of the younger kids for the garden, and the hundreds of crates of apples, carrots, assorted grains, and other various treats that Harry purchased for all of the refuges still living in the tunnels and underground garden.

The rest of the morning and roughly two-thirds of the afternoon were then spent playing down in the gardens with the centaur foals and some of the younger magical equines that had been orphaned or lightly injured during the dragon rampage (the still fairly young Mendoukusei amongst them). When Professor McGonagall came down to warn the children that they would need to start getting ready for the ball soon, she witnessed Harry behaving like a child alongside of the others for the first time as they played tag with the young centaurs and were chased about by the unicorn, winged horse, and thestral foals as they sought to steal the apples and carrots the children kept pulling out of thin air.

That all three of the children were laughing freely as they darted about made the sight all the more touching.

Harry and Neville headed up to their rooms an hour after Hermione left to get ready, took their showers, gathered their dress robes (Harry's being pulled from his Inventory), and roped Sirius and Remus into helping them since neither of them had ever worn dress robes before. Harry, for the first time in over five years, manually dressed himself instead of using the menu like he usually did; unintentionally giving the other three people in the room a good long look at the numerous scars that littered his not quite four-foot body.

The worst of the scars were the ones on his right shoulder (front and back from the Skull Reaper's stinger), the one running down the side of his right arm (from the Basilisk), the one on the back of his right hip (also from the Basilisk), and the always visible twin claw marks on his face. The rest of the scars were fairly forgettable in comparison to those three; even the long thin line that bisected his chest didn't garner as much attention as the other scars did. The newest of the scars were the least noticeable of all; Madam Pomfrey had done her best to reduce the scarring on the right side of his face, right arm, right side, and right leg from the dark cutting curses he'd been hit with by Queen Voldemort last year.

All three of them were shocked by the full extent of the scarring but they thankfully didn't make that big of a deal about it. Sirius and Remus had both known the full extent of the scarring that Harry had received through the years (due to the medical reports that Madam Pomfrey had given Sirius and from when Harry had sat down and actually told them about some of what he'd experienced since he got trapped in SAO) but knowing and seeing were two different things. Neville, on the other hand, had seen most of the scars on Harry's torso the previous year after the Boggart Lesson from Hell along with Hermione and the rest of the school.

Once he was dressed, Harry stared in the mirror for several minutes; wishing the image he saw reflected there didn't look like an eight year old child. He'd tried changing his avatar several times since the start of term but the avatar function had been disabled much like it had for the live version of Ken no Sekai (Kayaba had locked that function out aside from allowing people to chair the color of their hair). He also couldn't get rid of any of his scars or the white streaks in his hair. It wasn't that Harry particularly hated the way he looked; it was more that he disliked the attention that his looks always garnered (especially his size and scars).

Turning away from the mirror, Harry collected the corsage that he'd made for Hermione and headed down to the foot of the teak stairs that led up into the hidden apartment where he'd promised Hermione that he'd wait for her. Neville in the mean time headed out to collect his date from the dungeons near the kitchen (where the Hufflepuff Common Room and Dorms were situated). Fred and George would be meeting Neville in the Entrance Hall with their dates (the two of them taking their fellow teammates Alicia and Angelica while Katie was attending with Lee). Harry and Hermione, on the other hand, were supposed to wait in the antechamber off of the Great Hall along with the other two champions and their dates; they were to enter after everyone else had been seated.

The sound of footsteps crossing the bridge overhead drew Harry's attention and he turned around to face the staircase to greet his date. When Hermione finally came into view as she climbed down the spiral staircase, Harry felt his heart skip a beat quite unexpectedly over how pretty the fifteen year old witch looked. She was wearing a strapless pale green under robe that looked more like an a-line dress with a tight velvet bodice that flared out into a skirt made up of layered gossamer silk that flittered lightly with every step she took. Over top of that, she wore an open-fronted dark gold over-robe of heavier silk with long poet sleeves and dark green accents on the hem lines. The dainty slippers she wore on her feet were also made from silk and colored pale green and gold.

Her hair had been tamed and pulled up into a high bun and ponytail combination held in place with a small gold tiara with a tasteful number of curls and curled ribbons of pale green, dark green, and gold spilling down to frame her face. Someone had also helped the young witch to apply a light layer of make up that helped bring out the cinnamon color of her eyes and the red of her lips. Around her neck, she wore a gold velvet and emerald choker that Sirius had loaned her from the Black Jewels. She also wore a matching cloak clasp that would prevent her outer robes from slipping out of place while she danced and a gold and emerald bracelet on her right wrist.

"You look really pretty, Hermione," Harry sincerely complimented as she reached the bottom step.

"Thank you, James; you look handsome tonight too," Hermione replied as she blushed over the compliment.

"Remus helped me make this for you," Harry stated with a blush of his own as he held out the rose and orchid wrist corsage he'd made for Hermione. "I picked the flowers out and braided them together but Remus was the one that cast the charms on it to preserve the flowers for you."

"It's beautiful," Hermione breathed as she lifted her left hand to allow Harry to place the small corsage on her wrist.

"You two make a very lovely couple," Remus declared as he and Sirius joined the pair beside the staircase; Harry's godfather holding an old fashioned camera in his hands. "You've got close to a half an hour before you need to be in the antechamber so we thought we'd take a few pictures so the two of you can remember this night."

Harry sighed but didn't protest having a few photos taken as Hermione looked very happy over the prospect of having pictures taken of them. The next twenty-minutes were then spent posing in various spots around the Garden Chamber as Remus snapped dozens of pictures. In some of them the couple posed together, in others it was just one of them posing, and there were even ones where they posed with a few of the unicorns, winged horses (Mendou most prominently), an assortment of fairies, and Hedwig as the occamy made her first appearance of the night.

Once the short photo session was over, Harry and Hermione made their way up to the hidden entrance of the Chamber where they were met by Professor Flitwick who had come looking for the two of them. The diminutive professor also complimented the pair as he led them straight to the antechamber where the other champions were already assembled. Delacour was wearing a delicate looking silvery blue ensemble while her Ravenclaw date was wearing standard black robes that had a passing resemblance to a tuxedo. Krum on the other hand was wearing what looked like a red military uniform with gold accents and a short black cape while his date (one Susan Bones) was wearing shades of pale gray and silver.

Three of the four individuals in the room turned to glance at Harry and Hermione as they entered the room (Delacour's date rather fixated on his date due to the allure the partial veela was exuding). Harry bowed politely to the others while Hermione offered a brief curtsy; the others reciprocating accordingly (Krum bowing and the two girls curtsying in return). Any attempts the group would have made at polite conversation ended before they could start as Professor McGonagall (wearing green dress robes with her clan's tartan used as accents) arrived to let them know it was time for them to make their entrance; her eyes lingering briefly on the Gryffindor couple in the room.

The three couples entered the Great Hall in order of their current point standing, with Harry and Hermione going first followed by Delacour and her date and Krum and Bones entering last. The Great hall had been transformed into a winter paradise; the entire room decorated in pale blue, white, and silver with never melting ice sculptures gracing the small round tables that had replaced the four house tables and hundreds of blue, white, and yellow fairy lights scattered about the room alongside the floating candles. Lining both walls were two dozen fur trees dusted with real snow and decorated with silver tinsel, crystal snowflakes, and more fairy lights.

After leading the way across the room, Harry and Hermione made their way to the staff table (which had been set aside for the Champions and the Tournament Officials), where Harry followed Krum's example (the Bulgarian holding out the chair for Bones) as he seated Hermione before taking his own seat between his date and Ludo Bagman. The meal that followed was somewhat tedious for Harry, seated as he was beside the talkative official. Hermione was a godsend as she kept Bagman focused on his job as the Head of the Department of Magical Sports and Games instead of allowing the man to constantly pelt Harry with personal questions throughout the entire meal.

Once everyone has finished eating, Dumbledore cleared the tables off to one side and transfigured the staff table into a stage for the band he'd hired for the evening. That was the Champions' cue to make their way to the dance floor with their dates in order to open the dancing with a formal waltz. As the first notes of the song filled the Great Hall, Harry bowed to Hermione as she in turn curtsied to him before offering her his hand (the other two couples doing the same thing on either side of the young couple). The rest of the Great Hall disappeared a moment later as Harry and Hermione waltzed around the room and quietly compared this year's winter decorations to those of previous years.

At the end of the song, it was the explosion of applause that brought both fourth years back to the present and Harry asked Hermione if she wanted to keep dancing or if she'd like to sit the next song out. She chose to keep dancing once she made certain that Harry didn't mind. The two of them eventually found themselves dancing beside Neville and Hannah with Hannah gushing about how pretty Hermione looked; confessing that she'd not recognized the other witch until Neville had reminded her that Harry had asked Hermione to the ball. The two boys would then trade partners for the third song; so Neville could dance with Hermione at least once (he was her best friend, after all).

Harry would then dance another two dances with his date before he and Krum traded partners (at Susan's request) so Susan could thank Harry for including Neville in his dance lessons and therefore allowing Hannah to enjoy the evening (secrets were nearly impossible to keep in the castle and Hermione and Luna had talked about the lessons for the two boys). Shortly after that, Harry guided Hermione to a table so she could rest her feet before he fetched them both a bit of punch and some of the holiday treats that had been provided. Neville and Hannah joined them a few minutes later and the four of them spent around twenty minutes just chatting before they returned to the dance floor.

Harry and Hermione would then dance together uninterrupted for another three songs before Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick asked to cut in; Professor McGonagall wishing to praise Harry on how well he had been handling himself throughout the night. Before Harry could reclaim Hermione, Fred claimed his date and left Harry to dance with Angelina; the dark skinned witch laughing and teasing Harry for the pout he'd worn when Fred had whisked Hermione away. After that he danced once with Alicia and once with Katie while Hermione danced George and Lee respectively.

Fred and George had then teasingly argued which of them would dance with Harry next; the two pranksters pretending to mistake Harry as a girl because of his height. Harry escaped the embarrassment when Hermione asked him to take her out into the courtyard so they could rest for a couple of songs and get a bit of fresh air.

"Are you having a good time?" Harry asked as the two of them claimed a stone bench tucked back in the corner of the courtyard where they had a rather nice view of the moonlight dancing over the dark lake.

"Yes," Hermione replied without any hesitation. "To tell you the truth, I almost expected to spend most of the night sitting on the side watching everyone else dance; like most of the other fourth years have so far. You've been far more attentive than any of the other boys out there bar the seventeen and eighteen year olds."

"Sirius told me it was important that I make certain you had fun when I first ask him what would be expected of me after I asked you to be my date," Harry confessed with a soft laugh. "If not for his and Remus's advice I'd probably have been as clueless as most of the other boys tonight. Neville got to hear the same lecture even though he hadn't yet had a date to the ball at the time."

"That was sweet of you to ask them for help; most boys wouldn't have bothered."

"I just didn't want to humiliate you in front of the entire school since I knew everyone would be watching us out there tonight. I know I've not been the easiest of people to hang around these last three and a half years (last year especially) and so wanted to make certain I didn't make you regret saying yes to being my date for the night."

"Well you did a marvelous job because I don't have any regrets about tonight. I even learned quite a bit about magical sports from the Department Head for Magical Games and Sports."

"And earned my undying appreciation for sparing me an extensive personal interrogation from the same man, my lady," Harry quipped back with a soft laugh. "As well as for protecting my virtue from the redheaded bookends."

"Glad to be of service, my lord," Hermione simpered as she fluttered her eyelashes at Harry before the two of them started laughing softly at their own silliness.

"Did you want to go for a walk or would you rather go back and dance to another couple of songs?"

"You really wouldn't mind dancing some more?"

"I don't mind… I like to dance and after subjecting myself to Sirius's idea of dance lessons for most of the month I think it would be a shame not to take advantage of the music to put those lessons to use. Although, I'm curious as to what the centaurs would say if we were to waltz around the fire the next time we joined them in one of their celebrations."

They were still both laughing over the imagined reactions of the centaurs when they reentered the Great Hall to find the Durmstrang students showing off a bit while everyone else gathered round. Harry would actually be dared to join in by more than a few students after they heard him commenting on some of the acrobatic moves the older boys were pulling off. Hermione told him she didn't mind if he did some showing off of his own and so he tracked down Neville and Hannah so she wouldn't be left alone while she watched him play for a bit.

He started off with a simple series of back flips that ended with him in a one-handed handstand that he held for about half a minute before he flipped himself upright without touching the ground. Krum then responded by spring boarding off the back of one of his peers and somersaulted twice before he touched back down. Harry conned the twins into helping him for his next stunt as he got a running start that turned into a series of forward flips before he spring boarded from Fred's back, spun like a top in the air and landed hands first on George's raised hands (and nearly fell when George staggered under his slight weight once he landed).

Krum slapped him on the back as he conceded that round to Harry while those watching applauded. The two of them then pulled a couple of other stunts before the number of ladies wishing to dance put their foot down and stopped the competition. Hermione was quick to reclaim him and grill him about when and where he'd learned the tricks he'd performed and Harry confessed that he'd learned Acrobatics in SAO because those same tricks would help him dodge dangerous attacks during a fight when it wasn't feasible to use Sprint. He even told her that he had a bunch more tricks he could use in a forest by incorporating tree trunks and branches to get more height.

Krum and Susan ended up beside them shortly after that and the Bulgarian seeker asked Harry if he played Quidditch and if so, which position he played. Harry answered that yes he played and that he was seeker for his house team. Krum then wanted to know how Harry was on a broom and Hermione proudly declared that Harry could dance in the air with any broom to which Susan readily agreed. That of course had the Bulgarian asking Harry if he'd been interested in a little friendly competition before the end of the holidays. Harry shrugged his shoulders and agreed; stating that he knew the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch team had been annoyed that there'd be no Quidditch this year (they just needed to find a keeper to take Oliver's place since the older boy had graduated at the end of last year).

Harry passed the news onto Angelina and Fred (both of whom were ecstatic at the chance to play with or even against Krum) and the date for the friendly match and flying competition was set for the last day of the holidays to give the team time to find a keeper and train him up a bit. The ball ended shortly after that and Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Krum walked Susan and Hannah back to the dungeon entrance that led to the Hufflepuff Common Room. Krum then shook Harry's and Neville's hands and kissed Susan's and Hermione's knuckles before he headed out to the Durmstrang ship.

The trio of Gryffindors then made their way back to the Garden Chamber while chatting about the night's events and the combined game and competition they had to look forward to at the end of the holidays. Hermione thanked Harry for the wonderful time and gave him a kiss on the cheek once they reached her bedroom after Harry had awkwardly followed Krum's example and kissed her hand; leaving Harry feeling rather bemused as he drifted off to his own bedroom.

He absently hit Sirius with a Lip Trap as he passed the older man's open bedroom on the way to his room; the teen had not wished to be teased right at the moment.

* * *

**10-11-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	34. Waterlogged

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Four: Waterlogged

_Sunday, January 05, 2025 11:05 AM_

Harry pirouetted away from the bludgers as the Durmstrang beaters attempted to catch him in a pincer move before he dove down and whipped around the Gryffindor side goal rings and quickly caught back up to Krum as the older boy shot up after the snitch. They'd been playing for nearly three hours now and this was the third time the snitch had made an appearance during the course of the game.

Krum had tried to ground Harry using the Wronski Feint fairly early on but Harry had had no trouble pulling up out of the dive at the last minute; the fourteen year old had dove just for the sheer hell of it since he'd known that Krum hadn't spotted the snitch at the time. Harry had actually been the one to spot the snitch first all three times it had appeared; his hearing was far superior and he was better acquainted with the current pitch. Krum had far more experience though and knew far more plays than Harry did so they were actually fairly evenly matched (both of them flying on Firebolts).

Both seekers peeled off away from the snitch as Fred hit one bludger at Krum and one of the Durmstrang beaters aimed the other at Harry. By the time they righted themselves, the snitch was gone again. Knowing it might be a while before the snitch made another appearance, Harry dropped down to run interference with the Durmstrang chasers as he lured the beaters into targeting him down where the chasers were playing; breaking up their plays while doing his best to avoid hindering his own team at the same time. He then dropped lower to skim the grass growing on the field as he caught the whisper of wings fluttering nearby.

He found the golden ball hovering inside of a clump of taller grass near the edge of the field and he twisted around so that he was flying sideways right up against the stands as he reached out to lift the snitch up before it could dash away. He rose up triumphant and let out a loud whistle as he held the snitch aloft in his hands; much to the shock of the rest of the players as the catch had been completely unexpected (Krum off scanning the sky and thinking Harry was just showing off as the younger teen had done all kinds of tricks over the course of the game).

Durmstrang still won the match by a whopping ten points; Gryffindor's temporary keeper (one Ron Weasley) still rather untrained (though he had made some spectacular saves during the course of the game). Harry could have drawn the game out longer but there were others that had wanted to play as well (the more die-hard Quidditch players looking to impress the team scouts that were in the stands – most of them had come to watch Krum play after the news of the friendly game between the two schools had been leaked to the Daily Prophet less than two days after the ball).

As the teams were changed out (the Hufflepuffs team facing off against a team of Beauxbatons players), Harry and Krum walked side by side discussing various plays they'd each pulled off (much to Headmaster Karkaroff's ire). The two seekers would spend the next two games (another Beauxbatons team playing against another Durmstrang team after the current match was over) analyzing the seekers from the other teams. By the time the Quidditch matches had finished (there being a total of six games played over the course of the day) and Madam Hooch was setting up the obstacle field for the flying competition, Harry was on first name terms with Viktor.

As two of the best flyers between all three schools, Harry and Viktor would be the last two to run through the obstacle course and as they waited for their turn, Viktor asked, "Vhat kind of training do you do vith your team? I have never seen someone avoid bludgers and players alike quite da way you do."

"I've only ever practiced with my team a few days a week for the last three years and we mostly just worked on game plays and such. All of my dodging practice came from the spell casting training my godfather has been putting me through for the last year and a half."

"How can spell casting help vith flying?"

"Well, you see, my godfather is a rather sadistic man; my spell casting training takes place on a Cleansweep Seven with fifty snitches for targets and twenty bludgers running loose inside of an underground pitch. On top of that, he'll fly about with a beater bat and fire the bludgers at me with one hand while he casts spells at me with his other and I have to dodge bludgers, spells, and the walls all while trying to hit the snitches with various spells. After his friend started helping out, the difficulty level increased further as the two of them tag team me. I was doing that for two hours a day for almost a full year so dodging is rather instinctive at this point. It was exhausting training but I loved every minute of it; not only has my flying improved since he started training me but so has my accuracy and speed when it comes to casting spells."

"And I thought da drills dat our couch puts our team through vas brutal," Viktor deadpanned as he glanced at Harry in disbelief. "How did you survive?"

Harry laughed softly before he answered, "By the skin of my teeth at times and with plenty of bruises at others. The worst of it is the prank spells he hits me with; I thank every deity I can think of every time that few people ever see me after one my training sessions because I think I'd die of embarrassment."

"I vould love to vatch one of your training sessions and maybe try it myself," Viktor stated as he climbed to his feet as Madam Hooch signaled that it was his turn to fly the course.

"I'll see if I can arrange it with my godfather once the Tournament is over," Harry offered and Viktor nodded his acceptance before he trotted over to accept the borrowed Nimbus Two-Thousand-One that all of the competitors were using (to keep things fair) and mounted the broom as he took his place at the starting line.

Harry watched the older boy run through the obstacle course (which involved flying through a series of rings that were spread out through the stadium and in the air in a specific order without missing any of the rings). The current record for the shortest time was just under two minutes without missing a single ring (the student with the lowest time of one-fifteen had missed three rings to get that time). Viktor cleared the course in one minute and thirty-three seconds without missing a single hoop and without clipping any of the rings.

Harry whistled appreciatively as he took his place at the starting line and accepted the broom after it had been checked for stress (as it had been after each flight), Viktor was good. Harry's slight weight and short stature gave him a decided advantage though because there was less wind resistance when he flew and he could turn the broom on a dime without gravity pulling down on him and dropping his speed. The fourteen year old blew Krum's perfect score and time out of the water by nearly a full minute as Harry made it through the course in forty-two seconds flat (and that was without using any of his SAO skills to enhance his speed).

For grins and giggles, Viktor and Harry both ran the course a second time on their Firebolts and both of them shaved another fifteen and nineteen seconds off their scores respectively (Viktor getting a time of one minute eighteen seconds and Harry running the course again in twenty-three seconds). Harry would have undoubtedly been approached by more than one of the Quidditch scouts present if not for Dumbledore's interference.

The bearded wizard had no intention of allowing Harry to play professionally while he was still underage and so long as the man thought Harry was a danger to himself and others.

The pick-up Quidditch matches between the three schools would continue every weekend for the next three months bar those weekends when there was a Hogsmeade visit or when one of the Tournament Tasks were taking place. Harry and Viktor wouldn't participate again though; both of the seekers far too busy preparing for the Second Task which would take place towards the end of February.

* * *

_Friday, February 14, 2025, 7:35 AM_

Harry felt decidedly odd as he carried two small bouquets of yellow roses, lilies, and carnations through the halls on his way to breakfast (a set of flowers each for Hermione and Luna). Beside him, Neville was carrying three bouquets (one with pink roses and the other two with yellow flowers) and a single box of chocolates (the rose bouquet and chocolates were for his new girlfriend, Hannah Abbott, while the other two bouquets were for Hermione and Luna). Sirius had talked both boys into getting something for the girls and Remus had gone out to buy the chocolates for Neville while the flowers had again come from the underground greenhouses.

This would be Harry's first year ever giving away gifts on Valentine's Day and he wasn't certain how he felt about it since he'd never participated in the valentine exchanges in primary school. In SAO, the holiday been celebrated with the Japanese tradition where the girls gave their friends and the boys they liked chocolates on Valentine's Day and the boys would give their 'replies' on White Day (March fourteenth). He'd not received anything the first year but both Asuna and Lisbeth had given him chocolate tokens of friendship during the second year and he'd given them gifts in return on White Day that second year. He'd completely ignored both days entirely over the past three years though.

The two boys stopped just outside of the Great Hall to stare at the flowers they carried and wondered again how they'd managed to allow Sirius to talk them into this. Harry sighed in resignation before he squared his shoulders and made his way towards the Ravenclaw table where Luna was sitting off by herself eating breakfast. The dainty blonde jumped in surprise when Harry called her name to get her attention so they could give her the flowers they'd picked for her. Both boys were given a hug for their thoughtfulness with Harry also receiving a kiss on the cheek (making the short teen blush).

They then made their way over to the Gryffindor table where Neville gave Hermione the flowers he'd picked for her first (earning himself another hug) before he headed to the Hufflepuff table to give Hannah her gifts. Harry self consciously gave Hermione the flowers he'd picked for her next and was promptly given another hug and a kiss along with a small present that turned out to be a solid chocolate heart. Harry was more than a little surprised over receiving the chocolate heart and he glanced up at Hermione in confusion after he opened the gift.

"Luna and I overheard you and Neville talking about the differences between how we celebrate Valentine's Day here and how the Japanese celebrate Valentine's Day the other night. We thought you might like the familiarity of having at least two people observing the holiday in the way you are most familiar with and Luna will give you a little something later today."

"Thank you," Harry replied as he glanced back down at the chocolate heart again before he tucked it into his Inventory so it wouldn't get broken. "Although, I'm not really all that familiar with the Japanese traditions; I only know what Agil taught me when he taught me how to read, write, and speak Japanese fluently over the two years I was in SAO. I never could keep all the different festivals straight in my mind though and usually missed them because I was always out in the dungeons hunting. Still, I suppose I celebrated far more holidays with Agil and the others than I ever did with my relatives."

"How long did you live in Japan?" Hermione asked as she furrowed her brow in confusion.

"Never."

"But… but then how could you have played Sword Art Online if you weren't living in Japan? The game was only ever available in Japan."

"My uncle spent thousands of pounds to purchase the beta version from a client and then pre-ordered the full version of the game through the menu options because my cousin wanted it. I'm pretty certain my copy of the game was the only one that existed outside of Japan and I only had it because I stole it when it arrived in the post."

"Why did your uncle spend a small fortune on a free version of the game? I mean, all one thousand copies that were randomly distributed throughout Japan for the beta testing were all free; I remember reading that part."

"My cousin was the world's biggest spoiled brat that I've ever had the displeasure of knowing; worse than Malfoy, even," Harry dryly replied as a look of distaste passed over his face. "If he wanted something, he got it within a week of asking for it; it didn't matter how much it cost, how inconvenient it was for my aunt or uncle to purchase or provide it, or how impractical it was for him to have whatever it was he wanted. A chocolate sundae at midnight on a school night? He'd have the biggest one my aunt could make. Brand new Gameboy system because he broke the new they just bought him last week? No problem, he'd have one before the day was over."

"They gave him anything he wanted? What if he wanted a gun?"

"He had a gun; a pellet rifle that lasted a whole week before he sat on it and bent the barrel."

"You're kidding!"

"No. I swear that's the truth; I saw him sit on it myself… my cousin's crowning achievement was finally becoming wider than he was tall on his eleventh birthday; took after his old man in that regards."

The two of them were still laughing (at Harry's descriptions of relatives, not at heavyset people in general; since both of them knew what it felt like to be bullied and wouldn't dream of bullying others) when they climbed to their feet and headed off to their first class of the day. All through the day, Harry would open his Inventory and stare at the chocolate heart that Hermione had given him on the item list as he tried to place his feelings for the brunette witch. His confusion only increased when Luna presented him with a chocolate flower and another kiss on the cheek just after supper.

When he fell asleep that night, he was still trying to figure things out.

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_Friday, February 22, 2025, 9:28 AM_

Harry stood silently on the end of the pier that had been constructed for the Second Task and glared into the cold waters of the Black Lake. He was more than a little upset that Hermione had not returned the previous night after Professor McGonagall had appeared in the Garden Chamber and informed the teenaged witch that the Headmaster had wished to speak with her for a moment. He knew exactly where she was; the Locator Function attached to his Friend List told him she was smack dab in the middle of the lake and since there was no one standing on top of the water that meant she was inside of the lake.

And the only reason she would be inside of the lake was if she had been taken as part of the task.

That knowledge irritated him more than a little because while he was fine with risking his life on these stupid quests, he'd never ever risked anyone else's life before; not even when he'd been one hundred percent certain that every single one of them were NPCs.

Originally, Harry had planned to use his MaM skills to complete this task but now that he knew there was a chance that Hermione would suffer if he failed (the fourteen year old was taking the poem far more literally than the champions were expected to), he intended to use his best skills. Unfortunately, that meant that he was going to have to reveal a small fraction of just what he was capable of doing to the world. At this point he no longer cared; it wasn't really like he was trying to hide his skills anyway (not counting his ability to Teleport), he'd just been focused on building up his MaM skills so that he could clear the game.

Or at least he had before he had begun questioning his belief that he was still trapped in a game.

The sound of Bagman announcing the start of the Second Task let Harry know that it was almost time for him collect Hermione from the lake. Taking a deep breath, Harry closed his eyes and focused on the air around him for a moment as he prepared for the signal to start; he was going to need to make the air colder in order to freeze enough of the surface water that he could create an ice bridge to walk on. A loud whistle blew the moment Bagman finished his opening speech and two splashes sounded as the other two champions dove into the water.

Harry opened his eyes and counted to fifty in order to give the champions plenty of time to get deep enough in the water that his freezing a portion of the surface wouldn't trap them. Once he finished counting, Harry brought his hands up to touch the tips of his fingers to his forehead while his hands formed a loose triangle before he threw them outwards to activate the elemental spell he was using to freeze the water. A rush of freezing wind shot out over the water as a two foot thick ice bridge formed on the surface of the lake wherever the blue light of the spell touched. Harry waited for the bridge to fully form before he snapped his right hand upwards and then plunged it down in order to drop the temperature of the ice bridge even lower to prevent the water from melting it too quickly.

Once he was certain the bridge would hold, the fourteen year old used Sprint to cross the bridge in a split second; coming to a stop directly over where his menu claimed Hermione could be found. He then knelt down to study the surface of the water for a moment as he consulted his menu to verify that he was in the correct spot. Once he was certain he was directly over Hermione, Harry brought his hands together before he began slowly pulling them part and the water beside and below the section of the ice bridge he was standing on parted in response. As the water parted under Harry's direction, it formed a vertical tunnel that pierced the lake down to the lake bed where Hermione was tied to a stone pillar.

Harry grinned fiercely the moment he saw Hermione appear inside of the tunnel he'd formed and he used the wind to form an ice slide spiraling down the edges of the tunnel that would drop him right in front of his friend. He then jumped onto the slide and gave into the urge to whoop loudly as he rushed down the steep spiraling slide nearly as fast as he could fly. Hermione was just waking up from the enchanted sleep she'd been placed into when Harry tumbled from the slide and landed in the thick mud at her feet.

"Are you alright, Hermione?" Harry asked as the bushy-haired brunette blinked at him a few times.

"I'm fine… but what happened to using the Bubblehead Charm that Remus taught you?"

"I only just started learning to swim, Hermione; the moment it became clear that you were in the water and potentially in danger, I chose to use those skills that I know won't fail me," Harry replied as he hardened all of the mud at the bottom of the tunnel (bar the small bit he was sinking in) using his control over he earth before he climbed out of the mud and carefully made his way to Hermione so he could cut her free. "I wasn't going to take any chances that something would happen to you. It would kill me if a failure on my part saw you shattering."

Hermione gave him a soft smile and shook her head as she placed her hands on Harry's shoulders to steady herself as he cut her legs free. She then grew pale when Harry materialized his Firebolt and straddled the broom as he waited for her to climb on behind him.

"Come on, it's the fastest way out of here and I'm not sure how much longer I can hold the water back before I pass out from exhaustion. I promise I won't let you fall," Harry urged when he saw her hesitating.

Hermione spared a nervous glance at the water and ice surrounding them before she hurried to straddle the broom behind Harry. Harry felt his stomach flip and flop when she snaked her arms around his chest and pressed herself up against him (despite the mud he was covered in) as he gently pushed off the ground and allowed himself to adjust to the extra weight on the broom. He felt Hermione tremble and heard the small whimper she let out the moment their feet left the ground.

"Hold on tight," Harry ordered softly. "I'll have you out of here in a moment."

Her arms reflexively tightened their hold and Harry snapped the handle of his broom up as they shot up towards the small circle of sky that was visible. Harry frowned as he noticed the broom was taking far longer than usual to reach top speed; the presence of a second person adding both weight and drag that slowed the broom. The ominous cracking of his ice slide echoing up and down the water tunnel let him know that they were running out of time and he dropped his left hand down to his side and drew on the wind again as he snapped it upwards to create a tailwind to double their speed.

Hermione screamed in Harry's ear when the broom spun and leapt forward as the wind tore at their clothes. Harry cringed as his left ear began ringing as a result but kept his attention on the fast approaching skyline while fueling the wind that was helping them clear the tunnel of ice and water. Far below them, water and ice crashed together as the tunnel began rapidly breaking apart from the bottom up. It became a race against time at that point as Harry and the wind sought to out run the crush of ice and water that was raging beneath them. Just a few minutes later, Harry and Hermione exploded out of the tunnel as a geyser of ice and water formed up around them.

"Unbelievable! Did you see that folks!? Our youngest champion just escaped a death trap of his own making by the skin of his teeth! What power! Is it any wonder that the Goblet of Fire chose this mere slip of a fourteen year old over all of the seventeen and eighteen year olds that Hogwarts offered up for the Tournament based upon what we've seen him do so far?" Bagman's voice loudly declared as Harry leveled out his broom several hundred meters above the water's surface. "Despite being the last champion to start the task, Mr. Potter is the first to complete the task and he has done it in less than fifteen minutes! What a show folks! Such a magnificent display of power and determination!"

"Is it over yet?" Hermione shakily asked when the broom came to a brief stop.

"Almost; we're out of the water," Harry replied as he tried to catch his breath; his eyes flicking up to see that his MP Bar had dropped well into the orange zone (meaning he'd used up more than half of his magic). "It should be smooth flying from here to the pier since I won't have to call on the wind to push my broom faster like I did to escape the collapsing tunnel. Here we go."

"I hate flying!" Hermione cried out as the broom shot forward once more.

Harry tried not to laugh as he angled the broom towards the pier as they flew over the lake. They touched down just a few minutes later and Hermione scrambled from the broom the moment her feet touched the wooden peer. She stood there shivering (her wet robes covered in ice from the short flight) for a full minute as she waited for Harry to put away his broom before she threw herself at him. Once again, Harry found his face pressed up against Hermione's growing bosom when she wrapped him in a tight hug as she thanked him repeatedly for not dropping her.

They were pulled apart a few minutes later as Madam Pomfrey dropped lightly heated blankets around them and scanned them for any injuries. The healer then ordered them to both drink down a Pepper-Up Potion in order to prevent them from catching a cold because they were both wet and half frozen (though Harry at least wasn't completely soaked to the bone like Hermione was). Once the witch was finished with them, the two of them moved back off the peer to sit on the lake shore where it was slightly warmer while they waited for the other two champions to resurface with their hostages in tow.

"You do know that I wasn't really in any danger, right?" Hermione eventually asked as they sat side by side staring out over the lake.

"Last year the dementors were not supposed to target any of the students," Harry pointed out in a low voice. "None of the dragons were supposed to break free and attempt to burn the Forbidden Forest down in grief either and yet both of those things happened. There is no telling what might have happened to you if I failed to rescue you within the time limit given regardless of whatever safety precautions were taken. I wasn't going to take the chance that you would shatter; not now when I've finally begun to see you as a friend."

Before Hermione could reply to Harry's rather impassioned speech, there was a commotion at the pier as a bleeding Delacour floundered and choked as she resurfaced alone. Harry passed his blanket to Hermione as he used Sprint to reach Delacour's side in order to help her up out of the water.

"Gabrielle!" Delacour cried brokenly as she coughed up water and clung to Harry; apparently she too had taken the poem clue from the egg rather seriously. "My sister! I couldn't save my little sister!"

Madam Pomfrey hurried to their side and began treating the number cuts that the witch had on her arms, legs, and face where something inside of the lake had attacked her. Harry frowned as he glanced between the witch and the center of the lake where he knew the other two hostages to be waiting to be rescued (unless Krum had already saved his hostage). He then glanced towards the shore where Hermione was standing and watching him with concern while Delacour's wails grew louder as she was prevented from going after her hostage (her sister) a second time. A check of the time revealed that there was only fifteen minutes remaining of the hour they'd been given to complete the task.

Harry let his eyes briefly meet Hermione's across the distance as he pulled his Firebolt back out from his Inventory. He knew there was a very real chance that his stunt to free Hermione had endangered the other two hostages; something he'd not actually considered at the time. Two seconds later, Harry was racing across the sky to where the last remaining pieces of his ice bridge and slide floated on the water. Once he was roughly where he remembered making the first tunnel, Harry began forming a second tunnel as he angled his broom down into the parting water without bothering to wait for the tunnel to fully form like he had last time.

Once he reached the lake bed, Harry used his control of the water to turn the walls of the tunnel clear as glass while he searched the lake bed for the stone pillars that had held the hostages. He found them a moment later and immediately saw the a small girl that looked much like Delacour still tied to a pillar while the other two pillars held nothing but empty ropes. Harry pushed forward, forcing the water to move away from him as he flew towards the pillar containing the unconscious child. The moment the water released her; Harry cut the ropes holding her in place and pulled her into his arms.

He was about to fly back out of the tunnel when his tunnel of air collapsed around them as he grew too tired to hold the water back. Using the last of his magic, Harry Teleported the two of them out of the center of the lake even as a torrent of water crashed down on them. They arrived in a column of blue light and crashed onto the temporary pier alongside a ton of water that had been caught up in the Teleportation Spell. Harry coughed up what felt like a hundred gallons of water before he flopped back on the pier and tried to catch his breath while the little girl he'd grabbed only just began waking up.

He stared at his empty MP Bar for a few seconds before noting that both his HP and Health bar were both now in the red zone. He felt utterly and completely exhausted but he had at least made certain that no one would be left behind under the water. Harry closed his eyes and allowed exhaustion to pull him down into sleep only to be jolted awake seconds later as he found himself wrapped up in unfamiliar arms before a rain of kisses assaulted his cheeks. When he opened his eyes, Harry found himself face to face with a crying Fleur Delacour as she thanked him repeatedly and continued to kiss his cheeks every other second.

Eventually, he was saved from the overly emotional French witch by Madam Pomfrey who scanned him a second time for injuries. She soon declared him unharmed if magically exhausted but Harry had already known that. Harry would pass out a second time from said exhaustion before he could hear the scores being announced for the Second Task.

Hermione would later inform him that he was still firmly in first place with a total scare of ninety-three points out of one hundred; he had earned a total of forty-seven points for the Second Task. Viktor and Fleur were both now tied for second place as Fleur had earned the fewest points possible because she'd failed to complete the task while Viktor had scored reasonably well as he'd rescued his hostage (who had been Susan Bones) and returned within the time limit.

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**Game Terminology:**

MaM – **M**agic **a**nd **M**adness (Harry's name for the Wizarding World)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

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**10-11-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	35. Challenged

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Thirty-Five: Challenged

_Saturday, June 07, 2025 5:00 PM_

Harry would end up sleeping for close to three days due to how severely he'd drained himself during the task. Once he was up and moving again, he found himself under intense scrutiny as the students (and the rest of the wizarding world) speculated on just how powerful Harry was. Harry mostly ignored the gossip flying thick through the halls of the castle; only paying enough attention to what was being said about him so that he wouldn't be caught off guard by any negative rumors that cropped up. Fleur (the witch insisted Harry address her by her first name now) would publicly thank Harry one more time once he was up and moving when she formally introduced Harry to her little sister, Gabrielle.

The rest of the school year would pass by quickly after the Second Task; most of the passing weeks nothing but a blur in Harry's mind with a small handful of days standing out. The first of such days was in March, his small group of friends celebrated Luna's birthday (Harry gifting the blonde witch with a whimsical unicorn figurine) on the twelfth. Two days after Luna's birthday, he presented Hermione and Luna each with a box of premium white fudge from Honeydukes for White Day.

The next memorable day was the twin's birthday on April first when Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Luna pranked the entire school (and therefore both visiting schools) at suppertime and made it look like the twins had done it (the younger quartet's birthday present to the prankster pair). That was also the same day that the four friends that had been living in the Garden Chamber Apartment moved back to their dorm rooms while Mendou remained in the Garden Chamber and occasionally spent time with the centaur herd.

On Saturday, May seventeenth, the champions learned that the Third and Final Task of the Tournament would involve navigating a life-sized maze filled with dangerous creatures and spells; the winner of the entire Tournament being the one to make it to the center of the maze first. The task would be taking place on Saturday, June seventh at five o'clock in the evening (because it would take several weeks to grow out the maze). The order in which the champions would enter the maze was based upon their point standing, meaning that Harry would be sent into the maze first with Viktor and Fleur both entering five minutes later because they were tied for second place.

During the two weeks leading up to the Final Task, Harry spent his time preparing for the maze while his friends all revised for the End-of-Year Exams (exams for which Harry had been excused due to his selection as one of the three Tournament Champions). He mainly focused on attempting to increase his Magic Points in order to reduce the risk of exhausting himself before he finished the maze. Failing that, he hoped to increase the rate at which his Magic Points refreshed; since the faster he recovered his magic, the less likely he was to exhaust himself. He also made a list of the various spells he knew that would be most useful inside of the maze and practiced those spells exclusively; these mostly involved detection spells, directional spells, and those spells designed to counter a large number of creatures.

When the day of the Final Task finally arrived, Harry spent all morning and most of the afternoon in the Forbidden Forest with the centaurs and his godfather. Mendoukusei didn't leave his side the entire day; the colt had missed Harry since he was no longer allowed to follow Harry everywhere all day long. The not quite one year old colt was now ten hands tall (or just over three feet at the withers) and expected to gain at least another two hands (which would put him at roughly four feet – a full two inches taller than Harry and that was not counting his wings, neck, or head) by the time he reached one year.

Whether or not he'd reach the average height of a Granian (between sixteen and twenty hands in height) was uncertain as the colt had remained rather small due to being born as a twin coupled with the early trauma he suffered while a captive of the spiders. Harry actually kind of hoped Mendou wouldn't grow beyond twelve hands because the colt already pretty much towered over him but at the same time hoped he did because a small part of him wanted to fly with Mendou. They already flew together occasionally, with Harry riding his broom while the colt spread his wings (flying an instinctive skill for all winged horses), but Harry suspected that it would be much different to fly while riding on Mendou's back.

Upon his return to the underground garden after spending the day in the forest, Hedwig latched onto Harry in order to restake her claim on him; the occamy still irritated that she had to share him.

The only problem was that his familiar was now a good two feet longer than he was tall and she weighed nearly twice as much as he did (due to her length, the weight of her scales, and the density of her muscles from constant flying and the fact that she now hunted most of her food). Her neck was approximately a foot and a half long, her torso was right around the same length, and the rest of her six foot length was all tail. Her girth had grown considerably as well, with her neck roughly four inches in diameter near her head and closer to seven where it connected to her torso which was three times thicker than the thickest part of her neck. Her tail was eight inches at the base and tapered to a feathered point that added an additional fourteen inches to her length.

Hedwig's head was almost as large as Harry's now too, with her razor sharp beak large enough to swallow a medium sized dog whole (her jaw and neck being extremely flexible and able to stretch out enough to devour prey that was up to twice the diameter of the thickest part of her neck – much like a serpent's). Her feet now barely fit on one of Harry's shoulders and when she stood on the ground her head was level with Harry's shoulders; placing her at about three feet in height if you subtracted the length of her neck. Her total wing span was fifteen feet (just over twice her body length). She was actually large enough and strong enough now to carry Harry off if she so wished.

Thankfully, she was also fully grown and would not grow any longer, though she would put on another two or three stones and gain several more inches in girth as she matured through the years.

Harry still thought she was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen; her scarlet and silver feathered scales still as bright as the day he purchased her. She'd also grown more intelligent through the years they'd been together; her understanding of the spoken word expanding to include Italian, Spanish (the two other languages that Agil had taught Harry to speak), and Latin. Harry still didn't regret buying the jealous beauty; even if her jealous fits occasionally drove him up a wall (especially when she eyed all three of Harry's bonded House Elves as if they were tasty snacks).

When Harry made his appearance in the Great Hall at four o'clock, it was with a very visible Hedwig wrapped around him for the first time since the school year started. Her presence created quite the stir amongst the students from the other two schools; none of them had seen the occamy previously outside of those who followed the Daily Prophet. The reason for that was because Hedwig had refused to stay with Harry so long as Mendou was dogging his heels and then she'd been off helping Hagrid raise the two Swedish Short-Snouts that had hatched out from the eggs that Harry had picked up back in November. Viktor was actually the only one brave enough to approach Harry to ask about his familiar and receive permission to pet the fierce occamy; Hedwig crooning contentedly beneath the older teen's ministrations.

Half an hour later, all three of the champions were escorted down to the entrance of the maze (which had been grown inside of the Quidditch Pitch (much to the disgruntlement of those students that had been enjoying the weekly Quidditch games until they'd been banned from the pitch when the maze had been planted at the beginning of May). The Tournament Officials attempted to separate Hedwig from Harry but she was not in a mood to cooperate; the occamy felt that she'd left her human alone far too long and was determined to remind the world that Harry was hers. As his familiar, there wasn't really much the officials could do about her presence; there were no rules against allowing a champion to keep his familiar by his side, after all.

At exactly five o'clock, Bagman gave his opening speech to the gathered crowd before he sounded off a wand blast signaling that Harry was to enter the maze. Harry trotted forward without hesitation; Hedwig lifting her head up to scan the area as they slipped into the shadows that filled the corridors of the maze. A burst of elemental magic gave birth to a small globe of bright light that hovered just off to Harry's left; giving him more than enough light to see by as he moved through the towering hedges that were more than four times his height. When he arrived at the first fork in the maze, Harry pulled up his menu, engaged the mapping function, and watched as the entire maze unfolded in front of his eyes.

Harry then engaged his Listening, Searching, and Detection Skills in order to pinpoint those monsters and creatures that were within his range (which pretty much covered the entire maze because Harry had long since mastered all of his equipped and unequipped skills). Red lights blossomed all over the map as his Detection Skills picked up each of the monsters that were lying in wait for the champions. Now that he had an idea of where his opponents were laying in wait for him, Harry confidently headed down the left branch of the fork; right for the first pair of monsters.

The fourteen year old was disappointed to find himself facing nothing more than a pair of Chameleon Ghouls. They were easily dispatched with a few quick spells and he moved onto the next challenge before they had even finished shattering in death. The large patch of Devil's Snare that tried to strangle him as he turned the next corner was more of an annoyance than a real problem as well; Harry well acquainted with the dangerous vine after his first year. Another wand blast sounding off shortly after that signified that five minutes had passed and that Viktor and Fleur were now in the maze with him.

The trio of giant Blast-Ended Skrewts he ran into just a few minutes after the others entered the maze gave him his first real challenge. The huge scorpion-like monsters towered over him and had a full arsenal of dangerous weapons that included pinchers, stingers, venomous fangs, and exploding rear ends. Harry killed one in a lethal pit trap, another in a spiked net trap, and the third one using a blasting curse aimed at its open mouth over the course of a twenty minute fight with Hedwig's help as she'd clawed the creatures' eyes out much like she had when they'd faced the Basilisk together at the end of his second year.

Harry would then face a handful of spell traps that he easily disabled, another pair of Chameleon Ghouls, and another patch of Devil's Snare after he finished with the Skrewts. He then ran into a creature he would have preferred to have avoided if at all possible; a boggart. The Skull Reaper made it's third ever appearance at Hogwarts that night and not only did it's sudden appearance and high pitched screech of anger frighten the other two champions and a number of the other creatures in the maze, it damn near sent the entire audience into a panic (including those that had seen it during the previous year).

The reappearance of the Reaper brought back all of the insecurities and doubts that had plagued Harry at the start of the year after Hermione had confronted him with his research and he froze in the face of that fear for a full minute. Once he came back to his senses, he destroyed the Boggart-Reaper much as he had destroyed the one he'd faced for his End of year Exam last year. His foul mood remained with him once the Boggart shattered though, and when he found himself face to face with a Sphinx blocking his way forward he was in no mood to try and puzzle out the riddle she'd given him.

He gave her once chance to stand aside and let him pass before he attacked her.

It was not in the Sphinx's nature to stand aside from that which she guarded unless her riddle had been answered though and the woman-faced lion attacked Harry in response to his arrogance in threatening her. She shattered thirty-eight minutes later when Harry plunged his dirk into her heart after he'd wrapped her up in diamond wire; her attacks far weaker than the pride of Lizard Lions that he'd faced on the sixty-sixth floor of Aincrad. She'd left him with a new scar before her death in the form of four parallel gashes across his back (though they'd barely be visible once they were fully healed). The defeat of the Sphinx left Harry's path to the center of the maze wide open.

Harry wearily trotted into the center of the maze where he was immediately faced with a pair of Acromantula; both of whom fled the moment they caught sight of Harry (the enormous spiders had grown to fear the four foot wizard over the past four years). Harry let the spiders go for once as he instead turned his attention to the golden trophy sitting on a pedestal in the center of the clearing as his familiar once more settled on his shoulder, draped her body across the back of his neck, and wrapped her tail around his waist. The pint sized teen winced as she placed pressure on his latest injuries but he didn't let the pain stop him now that he'd reached the end of the task.

He didn't hesitate to reach for the trophy the moment he strode up to the pedestal as a sense of satisfaction filled him over having won the Tournament while competing against two individuals that were older (and he believed) stronger than him.

He was not prepared for the golden cup to transport him out of the maze the moment he touched the handle; the trophy having been turned into a portkey at some point. His experience with a portkey just before the start of the school year helped Harry to land on his feet the moment he was dropped down into a fog filled graveyard. The first thing he did was to stick the trophy into his Inventory before he reopened the mapping function and reactivated his Detection and Listening Skills that had been jarred by the mode of transport. While he was doing that, Hedwig shimmered and vanished before she silently launched herself into the air in response to Harry's emotions going back into battle mode.

Harry wrapped himself up in his Invisibility Cloak and activated his Hiding Skill the moment that he Detected four rather strong opponents in the graveyard with him; his Listening Skill telling him that at least two of them were human when he picked up the sound of their voices. He disappeared not a moment too soon as Lucius Malfoy materialized out of the fog alongside an unfamiliar man carrying a bundle of blankets with a red cursor hovering over it. Both wizards let out a string of curses when they found the small open space where Harry had landed empty.

Instead of fleeing, Harry moved closer to the trio and narrowed his eyes the moment the bundle in the unfamiliar man's arms was identified as Lord Voldemort. That would make this the fourth incarnation of the Dark Lord he'd face in just as many years. Baby Voldemort (because what else could he call the thing swaddled in blankets?) issued angry orders to 'find the brat' at that point and the two men promptly split up to search the graveyard for Harry. A short internal debate had Harry trailing after Malfoy; he owed the man for the cheep shot he'd taken at him at the end of the second year.

Once they were out of hearing range of the other pair, Harry began taunting Malfoy in order to draw the man further away from the other two, "I hope you aren't as pathetically weak as you were at the end of my second year; I will be sorely disappointed if you don't even present a challenge for me this time." Malfoy responded with a silent stunner that went wide of where Harry was hiding beneath his cloak. "Maybe you should have also worked on your aim during the two years since we last faced one another; you missed me by a mile."

Harry continued to taunt Malfoy and laughed out loud each time the man missed him as they moved further and further away from the others. Recalling what Sirius had told him about not killing the people he faced, Harry proceeded to dig a non-lethal pit trap once he deemed they were far enough away from the others. He then used his spider silk rope to form a net trap that he wrapped the older wizard up in before hitting him with a trio of spells (a Disarming Charm, a Stunning Spell, and a Banishing Charm) to push the man into the pit. Harry quickly covered the top of the trap with another net trap (this one of diamond wire which was resistant to all cutting curses – Remus had tested that for him) so that the man couldn't escape if he woke up or be rescued if the other man present stumbled across the trap before Harry caught him as well.

Once Malfoy had been secured, Harry went after the other lone opponent which turned out to be a large venomous snake that Hedwig had hunted down. The snake was unnaturally intelligent as it easily avoided Hedwig's talons and beak despite her being invisible at the time. Harry tried hitting it with a cutting curse but his spell slid right off the scales of the creature; telling him it was either magic resistant or it had been protected with spells. Not willing to risk Hedwig being bitten, Harry called down the lightning to destroy the snake as it turned briefly in his direction and hissed loudly.

The moment the snake died, a black cloud burst forth from it and shattered and Harry stared at the place it had died in shock for a moment as he tried to process the fact that he'd just faced yet another Soul Container of Voldemort's. The idea that there had been two versions of Voldemort present bothered Harry because it made him wonder just how many more times he'd be forced to face the undead shade. Legless Voldemort (as the snake was promptly dubbed in his mind) at least didn't have a chance to harm any of the students at the school. Hedwig crooned softly as she leaned against his leg and nuzzled his stomach with her face; the occamy offering comfort as she picked up on his inner turmoil.

"Find him, Crouch! Nagini told me he was close and the boy can't have gone far," Baby Voldemort ordered in a reedy thin voice before the thing began hissing loudly; the sound growing steadily angrier for some reason. "I will make the mudblood brat scream if he dared to attack my familiar with his dirty tricks."

"I usually don't kill other people's pets but your snake was polluting the very air with its presence," Harry taunted in response to Baby Voldemort's angry threat as Hedwig took to the sky once more.

Harry's smart mouthed taunt only served to piss Voldemort off even more as he screamed out orders for 'Crouch' to hurry up and capture the teen. Harry was bothered by that order since all previous variations of the undead shade had sought to kill him, not capture him; though he supposed the thing might just want to torture him before killing him. The teen shoved his worry and confusion to the back of his mind as he fought against the baby-dark-lord wielding Death Eater named Crouch.

It would take close to two hours for Harry to separate Crouch from Baby Voldemort; two hours in which the mismatched trio battled back and forth across the graveyard. Their fight had destroyed a number of headstones, exploded a giant bathtub sized cauldron filled with a vicious liquid, and driven Baby Voldemort to new heights of rage. The moment the wizard was no longer holding Baby Voldemort, Harry destroyed the baby monster using the lightning again and this time, when the thing shattered, a black cloud fled off into the night much like it had the night he'd defeated the Two-Faced Voldemort back in his first year.

The destruction of Baby Voldemort sent Crouch into a berserk rage and Harry was hit with two killing curses before he could block them. Much like the end of his second year, both curses washed over Harry and left him virtually untouched aside from the large amount of dark magic in them making him ill and causing him to vomit. While Crouch was trying to process exactly what happened (the man apparently either hadn't known that Malfoy's Killing Curse hadn't worked on Harry or he knew but hadn't believed that information could possibly be accurate), Harry took him down with the same trio of spells that he'd used on Malfoy. Crouch was then trussed up tightly in a combination of spider silk and diamond wire.

Harry sat down to catch his breath for a few minutes at that point as the long evening caught up with him; all three of his status bars once again sitting in the yellow and orange zones and the gashes on his back still bleeding (not that he even remembered those particular injuries at the moment). While he was sitting there, he unequipped his Invisibility Cloak, deactivated the Hiding Skill, and took a moment to scroll through the list of recently acquired items. When he finished with that, Harry dragged Crouch with him as he went to fetch Malfoy from the pit trap. Seeing the man had regained consciousness sometime after Harry left him, Harry used the sleeping spell that Professor Flitwick had taught him on the long-haired wizard.

Harry then hauled him out of the trap and tied him up much as he had Crouch.

The teen tied both men together by the feet after that and whistled for Hedwig as he reopened his menu and paged through the Inventory for the Tournament Trophy that had been listed as an active portkey. Once his familiar reclaimed her usual perch, Harry pulled the portkey from his Inventory and the four of them were whisked back to Hogwarts. His return at the entrance to the maze caused a huge panic as he showed up with Malfoy and Crouch in tow and looking as if he'd spent the last three hours fighting in a long and bloody war; which was close to the truth.

Things got worse when Harry vehemently argued with Headmaster Dumbledore and Minister Fudge about turning over his prisoners in front of the public and the press. Harry's reasoning; he didn't want two dangerous criminals back out on the street before the night was over because the Minister chose to pardon them (a direct dig to the man pardoning Malfoy after the wealthy pureblood had attempted to kill Harry at the end of his second year). Harry eventually turned them over to a group of aurors after Madam Bones gave him a formal oath that both men would stand for trial sometime before the end of August (so that Harry could attend said trial and testify against the accused).

Minister Fudge then shoved a money pouch containing one thousand galleons at Harry before he left in a complete snit due to Harry's loud accusations. When Dumbledore attempted to take him to task for being rude to the Minister of Magic, Harry turned on the bearded wizard and openly castigated the man for allowing his usual End-of-Year Test to be included with the Tournament. Harry was beyond pissed over the knowledge that one of the other champions might have been forced to face two versions of Voldemort simultaneously when one version was usually more than enough trouble.

Professor Moody attempted to drag Harry off after that but Harry was in no mood to be dragged about and he shoved the man hard; knocking him onto his back. The man retaliated with a cutting curse to Harry's back that hit Hedwig instead when the teen had turned to walk away, nearly severing her left wing completely and knocking her from her perch across Harry's shoulders. Harry saw red and attacked the man for daring to harm his familiar. The other staff members present hastily set up a containment ward to protect the audience (that had been impatiently waiting for information about who had won the Tournament after Harry had disappeared hours earlier) as the duel turned deadly within seconds; the adults all working to shift the students out of harms way.

Harry was hit with no less than three more Killing Curses during the relatively short fight and that wasn't counting the five or six additional acid green curses the man had cast at Harry. The fourteen year old had vomited blood several times by the time he wrapped Moody up in a trap and disarmed the man; the amount of dark magic clinging to his soul making him sicker than he had been back in September when Moody had cast the Imperius Curse on him. As Harry stood panting over the downed ex-auror and soon to be ex-professor, the man's features began to bubble and melt as his face and body reformed within his bindings.

Within five minutes, one Augustus Rookwood laid where Moody had fallen; the escaped Death Eater apparently had used Polyjuice to disguise himself as the retired auror all year long.

Harry glanced up to meet Dumbledore's stunned gaze before he turned his back on the headmaster and stumbled his way to his injured familiar's side as his body broke out in a sweat due to his rapidly rising temperature. The teen tenderly collected the keening occamy in his arms before he Teleported himself directly to the centaur's village; both of them needed extensive healing after the long and terrible night. His appearance in the middle of the village wasn't entirely unexpected as the centaurs had read the warnings in the sky over the terrible battles that would be fought that night.

Harry wouldn't be seen again until the fifteenth of June when he returned to the castle carrying a partially healed Hedwig in his arms and a stubborn Mendoukusei tagging along at his heels.

The pint-sized teen found himself being overwhelmed by his friends' response to his return (this group unexpectedly including Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott – both of whom had grown close to Neville, Hermione, and Luna since the end of the winter holidays); all of them very worried about his health after he'd disappeared on the night of the Final Task. His fellow champions even approached him in order to insure that he was alright; both of them had witnessed his battle with Rookwood (and therefore seen him hit by multiple Killing Curses). After reporting to Professor McGonagall, to let her know he was back in the castle, Harry led his group of friends, companions, and fellow champions down into the Garden Chamber (so he could settle Hedwig into the old Basilisk den and to escape the stares and buzz of gossip that were following him everywhere he went).

Once Hedwig had been settled, Harry gave Susan, Hannah, Viktor, Fleur, and Gabrielle a tour of the garden and all of the side tunnels. The group then shared lunch while lounging about the garden as Harry hesitatingly answered a few of their questions about everything that had happened during and after the Final Task. After noticing how uncomfortable Harry was with the current topic, the newest visitors to the underground garden changed the subject and began pelting Harry and his closest five companions with questions about the Garden Chamber.

The five newcomers were suitably impressed with the verbal description of the transformation that the Chamber of Secrets had undergone over the course of the past two years. By the time the group returned to the castle proper for supper (Viktor, Fleur, and Gabrielle required to make an appearance least Headmistress Maxime think someone had kidnapped the two partial veela or the other Durmstrang students worried for Viktor's health; the eighteen year old had taken charge of his peers when Karkaroff disappeared on the night of the Final Task after hearing Harry throwing about Voldemort's name) everyone there had been added to Harry's Friend List. That included Fred and George; who'd been the only two out of Harry's companions that had hadn't been added earlier that year since they'd spent most of the year experimenting and creating new pranks.

Viktor would return to the chamber first thing the next morning along with Sirius and Remus (the two older wizards had been absent since Harry fled to the centaurs seeking healing for himself and Hedwig for unknown reasons). After being introduced to the two men, Viktor spent an hour on the underground pitch dodging the twenty practice bludgers and trying not to crash into the walls. Harry would have given his promised demonstration at the same time but he was still rather exhausted from adding four magically strong teenagers, two moderately strong teenagers, and one eight year old child to his Friend List; meaning his magic had needed to overcome the magic of another seven people in order to overwrite their magic with Aincrad's code.

Harry would then spend the last four days of term down in the garden watching over Hedwig; only bothering to make an appearance once a day (usually at breakfast or lunch) at the request of Professor McGonagall. He had also been required to attend the Leaving Feast in order to hear the usual end of year announcements which included a list of this year's top students; Harry ended up in second to his mild displeasure due to him not taking the End-of-Year Exams with the rest of the fourth years. His fellow champions were frequent visitors during that time; both of them seeking to get to know Harry better and spend time exploring the underground gardens until they left on the eighteenth with the rest of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang contingents.

Harry's friends often stayed down in the Gardens with him as well; the entire group seeking to avoid the nosy students that kept hounding them for information about Harry.

When the day came for the other students to leave on the twentieth, Harry was quite happy to see the bulk of them go. He still hated the fact that he was once again forced to remain behind though. This year it really hurt to watch Hermione and the rest of his friends walk out the castle doors while he was forced to stay behind. The moment the doors slammed shut behind the last of the leaving students, Harry fled down to the gardens, gathered his familiar and ever present shadow (Mendoukusei), and headed for the centaur village in hopes of getting his hands on a few bottles of nettle wine. He didn't want to drink himself into a stupor; he just wished to drink enough to numb the pain he felt in his heart.

While he didn't get the wine he'd gone looking for, Harry did find distraction enough as his centaurian sire set him to work with the other young hunters clearing out the old storage pits in order to dispose of the last of the winter stores that had begun to rot in the growing heat as summer rapidly approached.

* * *

**Notes:**

Hands – when used as a measure of height, one hand is equal to four inches.  
Stone – when used as a measure of weight, one stone equals fourteen pounds

* The reason why the Killing Curses don't work on Harry will be explained later in the story right about the same time as a bunch of other unexplained anomalies will be explained. I know that must bug a few people but the explanation has been planned out for well over a year before I even started posting this story.

* * *

Harry's MaM Data/Stats Page (End of 4th Year):

**Classification:** Gryffindor Student  
**Level:** Fourth Year – Complete  
**Student Rank:** 02 (H. Granger 1st)  
**Health:** Incalculable  
**HP:** Incalculable  
**MP:** Incalculable  
**Familiar:** Hedwig (Occamy – Female)  
**Pets:** Gaki (Snowy Owl – Male), Mendoukusei (Granian/Winged Horse – Male)  
**Bonded House Elves:** Dobby, Winky, &amp; Tizzy  
**Patronus:** Large Bear  
**Special Titles:** Boy-Who-Lived, Child-Hero, Natural Flyer, Gryffindor Seeker, Centaurian Hunter Bellator, Tri-Wizard Champion  
**Wallet:  
**Galleons – 3832  
Sickles – 1866  
Knuts – 3391  
Pounds Sterling – 3500

**Main Equipment:**

Bags of Holding (13 in use) – Each one has unlimited space and masks weight of contents  
Broom – Firebolt  
School Uniform – Pants, shirt, vest, tie, robes, shoes, and hat (Basic Clothing with no special capabilities)  
Tri-Wizard Uniform – Cloak, pants, and boots (offers basic defense and only used during the three tasks)  
Wand – 11 inches, Holly and Phoenix Feather  
Cloak of Invisibility – A cloak that renders the wearer invisible

**Skills:** (Levels – Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Proficient, &amp; Mastered)

**Magical Knowledge:**

Ancient Runes – Advanced  
Animagus Theory – Intermediate  
Arithmancy – Advanced  
Astronomy – Proficient  
Magical Creatures – Proficient  
Magical History – Proficient  
Magical Plants – Proficient  
Magical Theory – Proficient

**Spell Casting: **

Charms – Intermediate  
Defense – Intermediate  
Offense – Intermediate  
Transfiguration – Intermediate

**Practical Skills: **

Archery – Advanced  
Flying – Mastered  
Herbology – Proficient  
Hunting – Advanced (based upon spells used/mastered)  
Potions – Advanced

* * *

**10-11-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	36. Complications

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Six: Complications

_Saturday, June 21, 2025 9:05 AM_

When she hadn't received a reply by the end of October, Hermione believed that the man she'd written to for help in tracking down James's friends from Sword Art Online had either thrown out her letter without reading it or simply had no desire to help her. She was secretly thankful that she'd never mentioned the letter that she'd sent Kazuto Kirigaya to James because she knew that he would have been crushed by the lack of response (he'd had trouble enough coping with everything else that she'd revealed to him). She had half wondered if she should send a second letter but decided that it would be too rude to push the man when she had undoubtedly dredged up a past that the man more than likely wished to put behind him.

Instead, Hermione focused on her budding friendship with James as she finally got to know the real James and not the apathetic façade that he presented to the rest of the world (a façade that had been chipped and cracked during the course of their third year). It was like he was a completely different person this past year; occasionally laughing, joking, and sharing bits and pieces of his life (proving himself to be no different than any other fourteen year old boy if you didn't count the fact that he'd been pushed to the breaking point repeatedly over the last two years). Hermione couldn't help but admire the real James more so than she had the stoic hero she'd first met back in her first year.

By the end of her fourth year, Hermione was well and truly smitten with the younger (and shorter) boy. He treated her with respect, he listened to what she had to say, and he honestly valued her friendship (once he'd allowed himself to admit that he saw her as a friend). That he treated all of his friends that way (few though they were) only made her love him more because it proved that the way he treated her was real and not just some act he put on to woo her with false intentions; not that he was actively wooing her (much as she might wish otherwise). And while half the girls living within the castle sported crushes on the Boy-Who-Lived the only one who truly cared for James as much as Hermione did was Luna (and for pretty much the same reasons).

Aside from James's godfather, his godfather's friend, Luna, and herself, the only others to claim true friendship with James were Neville and Fred and George Weasley. At the end of the year that list would almost double as it grew to include Viktor Krum, Fleur and Gabrielle Delacour, Susan Bones, and Hannah Abbott; bringing the total number of people Harry considered friends up to twelve. Hermione had ended up being friends with the same group of people, though she'd already been growing close to Susan and Hannah as they shared a number of classes and the two girls had begun hanging out more with the Gryffindors after Neville had shyly asked Hannah to be his girlfriend before the end of the winter holidays (further proof that his sorting in the House of the Brave hadn't been a fluke).

After Halloween, Hermione forgot all about her supposedly unanswered letter as she got caught up in her classes, her growing feelings for James, and the drama that seemed to always surround James; this year's trouble being the Tri-Wizard Tournament and Death Eaters. It was therefore a bit of surprise to find a letter post marked from Japan sitting amidst the pile of yearly correspondence that always seemed to pile up while she was away at Hogwarts when she arrived home on the evening of June twentieth.

Before she could open it and read what it had to say, her parents had called her downstairs for a family meeting in which she learned that a group of individuals from Japan had shown up at their practice in Dover at the end of May looking for answers. Her parents lightly scolded her at that point for not telling them what she'd been up to but also let her know that they were proud of her for trying to help her friend (the two adults had waited to scold her in person rather than through a letter since they knew she'd been home soon).

Hermione had woken up bright and early on the twenty-first with a serious case of apprehension; she was going to meet the people that had played a big part in her friend's life. More importantly, she was about to potentially meet the man that James had often referred to as his father; a scary prospect for any girl that desperately wished to be the girlfriend of the boy she was majorly crushing on – what if the man didn't like her and James stopped being her friend because the man he considered his father hated her? Before she could have a complete and total breakdown, her mother called her downstairs for breakfast and distracted her with questions about her school year.

At nine sharp, the doorbell rang and Hermione's nervousness returned tenfold and she couldn't help but start chewing on her fingernails as her father answered the door while her mother made tea and got out the refreshments she'd prepared for this meeting. All too soon, Hermione was walking into the sitting room behind her mother carrying a tray of breakfast pastries, fresh fruit, crackers, sliced meats, and sliced cheese to go with the tea and juice her mother was carrying.

As her mother politely greeted their guests, Hermione took a moment to study the five individuals. The oldest was a tall and somewhat intimidating black man wearing a white button down shirt and black slacks. She couldn't help but picture him as the stern but friendly genie in the bottle with his friendly and intelligent brown eyes, bald head, neat goatee, and the twin cuffs clipped to his left ear.

Next was a slightly scruffy man who was almost as tall as the black man but more on the scrawny side with short, messy brown hair wearing a faded, long sleeved, red shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and worn out blue jeans. His face was lined with faint laugh lines and his brown eyes seemed to dance with merriment; as if he was always laughing at some secret joke that only he knew. Seated beside that man was a petite young woman with medium brown hair dressed in a dark pink and white sun dress and knee high boots. The most startling thing about the young woman was her vibrant violet eyes that were currently filled with undisguised hope.

The last couple, and there was no doubt that they were a couple based upon how comfortably their hands fit together and the way they sat slightly closer to one another than was strictly proper, consisted of a young man wearing an unbuttoned black dress shirt over a black t-shirt, and black slacks while the young woman wore a pale green summer dress and brown sandals. The man had messy black hair that reminded Hermione of James's hair, intense dark eyes that seemed to pierce her soul when he glanced in her direction, and a lithe form that hinted at a familiarity with martial arts or sports. The woman, on the other hand, had warm honey colored eyes, long honey colored hair that fell below her waist, and seemed to radiate serenity and confidence as she held herself with the graceful poise of a queen.

The assessment only took a few seconds and then Hermione's father was introducing her to the five visitors and she found herself being scrutinized in turn. Hermione murmured a polite greeting and sat down between her parents still feeling a little nervous and more than a little out of her depth. Thankfully, she wasn't forced to make polite small talk as the young man with messy black hair, whose name she'd learned was Kazuto Kirigaya and the man she'd written her letter to, cut right to the point.

"Your parents were kind enough to explain that you had not intentionally ignored the reply that was sent in response to the letter that you sent to me nine months ago. Still being a student myself, I can understand how easy it is to get caught up in your classes and attending a boarding school so far from home undoubtedly made it difficult to check your mail as frequently as one normally would. In the letter you sent to me asking for my help, you brought up the name of someone that was, and still is, very near and dear to our hearts; someone for whom we have been diligently searching over the past four years without much luck. Up until I received your letter, we had not been able to find even the whisper of a rumor of what happened to our friend; so you might be able to imagine how wary and hopeful we all were when I got your letter."

"We would love to believe that you have truly found our friend because we have long worried over what might have become of him in the aftermath of the Sword Art Online ordeal," Asuna Yuuki, Kazuto's girlfriend, added softly as she leaned forward slightly to catch hold of Hermione's gaze. "It was not easy learning how to live again and our ordeal did not end just because Sword Art Online had gone offline but we had each other to help us get through the worst. What little information you gave in the letter that you sent to Kazuto troubled us greatly and when we didn't hear back from you, we made arrangements to come here to get answers and so we could help our friend if at all possible."

"We do not wish to imply that we think you are lying," Kazuto continued the moment Asuna finished speaking and Hermione let her gaze be drawn back to the charismatic young man. "But we need to be certain that the young friend you mentioned in your letter is the same friend that we have been looking for all this time."

"I understand," Hermione bravely replied after taking a deep breath to center her emotions. She then marshaled her inner Gryffindor as she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin minutely in challenge as she added, "So long as you understand that I will not give out any personal information about my friend until I know for certain that you are his friends and not any one that seeks to harm my friend. I will not allow anyone to break him further."

"Oh I like her," Ryoutarou Tsuboi, the rather scruffy and laid back man, declared in thickly accented English as he flashed a grin at Hermione. "It is no wonder why our little gaki would latch onto her, if he's our little gaki; she's a right feisty one. In fact, she kinda reminds me of you, Asuna-chan."

"Behave yourself, Ryoutarou," Rika Shinozaki, the brown haired woman, ordered with a huff of exasperation and the slightest upturning of her lips (as if she was doing her best to hide a fond smile).

"We do not have any pictures of James," Andrew Gilbert Mills (or Gil as he preferred to be addressed), the rather stoic black man, stated as he pulled a folded piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and passed it over to Hermione. "But we had a rough sketch drawn up of James as he appeared during the years he was trapped alongside of us in Aincrad. I imagine that he's grown a bit but it should be enough for you to tell us if your friend looks anything like him."

Hermione unfolded the paper and stared at a drawing of James that was almost the spitting image of her friend minus the facial scars and the patches of white hair. Still holding the picture, Hermione excused herself for a moment as she climbed to her feet and dashed up the stairs to grab the copies of the Yule Ball photos that she'd been given (most of them frozen to prevent anyone from seeing the figures moving inside of them). She then hurried back down stairs and returned to the sitting room with the photos held tightly in one hand while she compared the top picture to the drawing she still held in the other.

Hermione then reclaimed her seat as she finally looked up from the photos and drawing she replied, "Actually, he hasn't grown an inch in the last four years, or rather the last six years according to James, and you forgot one very obvious feature."

Gil accepted both the drawing and the stack of frozen photos when Hermione held them out to him once she finished speaking and he sucked in a sharp breath as he stared down at a very familiar face covered with painfully familiar scars (and at least one new one). Kazuto was quick to snag one of the pictures from the man's unresponsive hands so he could see what had startled the older man and both he and his girlfriend let out startled gasps.

"That should be physically impossible; he received those scars on the left side of his face inside of the game. There is no conceivable way that those scars could have transferred over to his body once he'd been freed from the game and I don't recall his hair having any white in it; even after he got that scar while fighting the Mossy Wyvern."

"In the four years that I've known James, I've learned that the word impossible just doesn't apply to him," Hermione dryly pointed before she bit her lip and considered how to confirm that these people were James's friends. After a minute she took another breath and challenged, "The one time that James spoke of how he earned the name Dragon Slayer James the Reckless, he told us that he'd been known by another name at the start of the game and that only his friends would remember what that name was. If you really are his friends, then you should know that name."

"He was called Tracker James," Gil answered without hesitation. "And if he told you that name, then you should know when and where he first earned that name."

"He was given that name during the beta test of Sword Art Online while he was on the third floor of the game guiding another player to the den of a boss monster that was supposed to have some rare item."

"Is he… in your letter, you mentioned that you feared he was being pushed to the breaking point and then there was your earlier assertion that you would not allow anyone else to break him further… is he alright?" Gill asked worriedly after he'd given her a dazzling grin filled with relief and fueled by hope.

"These last two years have been very hard on James, our third year especially and I think I might have made things worse at the start of this last year when I confronted him with my research on Sword Art Online but once he got caught up in the Tournament, he seemed to stop floundering. I know he'd lost a lot of weight off and on during both years though and I suspect he'd had a lot of trouble sleeping at times too; as I'd noticed the circles under his eyes more than once. He didn't try to push us away this last year like he did several times in our third year but he'd still disappear sometimes and he became really withdrawn after the terrible conclusion of the Tournament he'd participated in but I think that was mostly due to Hedwig being seriously injured."

"There is so much that had happened the past four years but I can't tell you exactly what happened because I'm not allowed to speak about that stuff unless you already know about it," Hermione babbled as she realized that she couldn't really explain anything because she couldn't tell them about magic unless they were already aware of magic but to ask them she'd have to tell them about the magic first. "Things got a worse before they got better but he's still floundering and trying to figure out what is real and what isn't and that thing I'm not allowed to talk about is only complicating matters."

"Dear, you're not making any sense," Mrs. Granger gently pointed out and Hermione glanced up from the floor where she's been staring to find all five of their guests staring at her in confusion.

"Right; sorry, I tend to ramble and babble when I'm flustered. Physically, James is doing okay now if you don't count the fact that he still looks like he's eight years old; something that has irked him to no end. Mentally and emotionally he's still struggling but he's no longer in danger of a complete and total mental melt down, as far as I can tell; though that might have changed since he'd not been allowed to leave the school for the fourth summer in a row. There were a few times he came close to losing it this past year though and I know he's still under a great deal of stress."

"Is there anything else you can tell us? Like where we can find the school you mentioned and who we can talk to about getting clearance to know those things that you keep saying you aren't allowed to tell us about?"

"I don't know… the school is rather isolated and only certain people can find it and I don't know how to get there the normal way. Merlin's singed beard but this would be easier if James was here. He'd have no problems telling you whatever you wanted to know because I don't think he cares about getting into trouble, not that he isn't already in trouble with the Ministry anyway right now because of what happened at the end of the school term both this year and last year, but they can't really touch him because he's practically considered royalty due to what happened to him and his parents back when he was a baby."

"His parents died in a car crash when he was a baby; how does that make him royalty?" Kazuto inquired with a frown.

"A car crash? No, that's not true; his parents were both murdered by a… a terrible man when he was just a baby. I'm not sure if James believes that though because when he was first told what happened to his parents, he was still very certain that he was trapped inside of another game. He pushed everyone away during our first three years at school because he thought we were all NPCs designed to keep him a prisoner and brainwash him into forgetting the real world. I can't really tell you any more about that though because I'm not…"

"Allowed to speak of it?" Rika asked with a wry grin.

"Right; you know what… this isn't getting us anywhere," Hermione groused sheepishly as she pursed her lips and came to a decision. "The only one who can give you answers is James and that means that I have to tell him that I contacted one of you since I never told him about the letter that I sent at the start of last year because he'd practically broken down in my arms after I confronted him about Sword Art Online."

Before they could comment on her rather cryptic statement (or get a detailed accounting of why James had broken down), Hermione completely shocked all of the adults in the room (her parents included) as she opened a standard on-line gamer's Player Menu and proceeded to send an urgent message to James explaining what she'd done, why she'd not told him sooner, and informing him of her current company. When she finished, she closed out the menu to find all eyes on her and she blushed when she realized she'd just used magic in front of muggles and broken both the rules against underage magic outside of school and the Statute of Secrecy that she'd been trying so hard not to break all morning.

"Um, Kazuto, did we get sucked into another evil plot to lock us in a virtual reality without our knowledge?" Ryoutarou asked in a stage whisper as he leaned across Rika to address the younger man.

"No… I don't think so. I'm not seeing any glowing green diamonds and I'm pretty certain that no one outside of us five and our friends and families back home know about James or that we're here trying to find him," Kazuto replied as he automatically attempted to open his own menu just in case. "And my menu is not responding; so I'm pretty certain we're good."

"Okay, just checking. We all did just see what she did, right?"

"Yeah… Gil?"

"I don't know. In a way it would explain so much…"

"Hermione, dear, won't you get in trouble for doing you-know-what in front of them? And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there rules against you using _it_ outside of school?" Mr. Granger asked in concern once he got over his shock.

Hermione just gave her parents a weak, sickly smile and slumped back in her seat before burying her face in her hands; all she'd wanted to do was help her friend. And she'd not had any time to fully prepare herself for this confrontation.

* * *

_**Meanwhile, back at Hogwarts…**_

Harry had woken up long after the sun had risen and spent a few minutes stretching out cramped muscles after he shoved Mendoukusei's wing off his back. He'd then spent a good half an hour changing the poultice and bandages on Hedwig's partially healed wing and back; the dark magic from the spell that had injured her still hindering the healing process. He was at least thankful that she was expected to make a full recovery (meaning she wouldn't lose the use of her left wing as he'd first feared she would) though she would still end up with a scar (her brilliant red feathered scales now marred by a line of pinkish white that ran through both scales and the newly grown feathers; the scales the line passed through also slightly deformed).

Once the injury had been tended, Harry fed his familiar an assortment of monster meat from his Inventory and spent time smoothing and straitening her crest and tail feathers with his fingers. By the time he was finished pampering Hedwig, Orsus and Caleo had woken up and the three of them shared a light breakfast of dried fruit and nuts before they made their way towards the center of the village to meet with Magorian to see what their duties for the day would involve.

The herd leader was just debating on whether to send the trio to collect nettles from down river (so they could start fermenting the stinging leaves to make this year's batch of nettle wine), to have them stand watch over the foals (one of Harry's favorite duties), or to send the three of them to deal with a pack of particularly vicious Dire Wolves that had moved into the area recently with a couple of two year olds ready for their Hunter Initiation Test when Harry received an urgent message from Hermione through his Player Menu.

_Dear James, _

_There is something I did at the end of last summer that I didn't tell you about sooner  
because I didn't want you to be disappointed if things didn't turn out the way I had  
hoped they would. When I didn't get a reply, I thought I had hit a dead end but it turns  
out that I did get a reply; only I never got it. _

_Anyway, what I'm trying to tell you is that I'd written to one of the other survivors of  
Sword Art Online in hopes that the man could help me to help you find your friends. I  
just found out that the guy I wrote actually knows you and has been looking for you all  
this time. _

_The funny thing is, when the man didn't get a response to the reply he sent, a group of  
them flew out here to England to talk to me and he's here right now with the others;  
and they all seem to know you. I asked them a few questions and they had a drawing of  
you but it was missing your scars so I showed them our photos from the Yule Ball and  
they seemed shocked but they are certain that you are the one they have been looking  
for and I'm certain they are your friends. _

_The problem is that I don't know how to tell them about the magical world because it's  
against the law to tell people who don't already know and it's just getting confusing. I'm  
out of ideas here… is there someone you can think of that can come to my house to  
explain things to them? I really wish Headmaster Dumbledore would have allowed you  
to stay at my house this summer, then you could have been here when they got here  
this morning._

_Please get back to me soon. _

_Love,  
Hermione_

Harry felt his legs collapse out from under him as he stared at the message in shock; desperate hope filling his heart even as the fear that this was too good to be true threatened to crush him. He needed to know who had come looking for him and with a shaking hand he reached up and desperately hit the reply button before typing out a single demand.

_Tell me who is there._

The reply, when it came (written as it was in oh so familiar romaji), brought tears to his eyes and he started laughing manically as the four years' worth of negative emotions that he'd been slowly drowning under were temporarily shuffled into the depths of his mind in that moment.

_Gaki, don't be rude. Just tell me where you are already so we can come get you._

_Agil_

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat

* * *

**10-11-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	37. Reunion

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Reunion

_Saturday, June 21, 2025 9:54 AM_

"Magorian, I'm going to have to apologize to you for skipping out on my herd duties indefinitely," Harry rasped once he got his emotions under control. "I'm leaving the castle."

"The stars told us that this day would come," Ronan stated as he, Firenze, and Bane trotted up to join the group gathered around Magorian.

"Be warned, young Bellator; Dumbledore will not so easily let you sever ties with his house of stone," Bane warned as he gently tugged on Harry's family braid (a gesture of affection amongst centaurs).

"Today's parting is not a goodbye; we shall see one another again," Firenze assured Harry as he clapped a hand on Harry's shoulder before passing the diminutive wizard a heavy bag filled with fresh fruits and grains for Mendoukusei and more of the healing poultice for Hedwig's injuries.

"Walk with care, young hunter; Mars still speaks of wars yet to come," Magorian intoned solemnly. "We shall meet again when our lands are invaded once again by the foals of man and the herd shall receive you with open arms for you are one of our warriors no matter what face you wear."

"Thank you," Harry replied as he bowed to the four adults before turning to face his brothers. "Don't let the foals forget me while I'm gone and tell them they'd better practice if they ever hope to catch me the next time we play tag."

After he finished saying his goodbyes, Harry darted back towards the shelter he shared with his brothers whenever he stayed within the village so he could collect Hedwig and Mendoukusei. He then hesitated a moment as he tried to decide whether he should jump straight to Hermione's side or if he should tell Sirius and Remus where he was going. After a short mental debate, he Teleported himself, Hedwig, and Mendou to the underground garden so that he could let his godfather and Remus know what was going on so they wouldn't worry about him. He found the two men lounging about beside the pond sipping iced lemonade and playing a game of Wizard's Chess.

"Why are you back here so early?" Remus asked as he glanced up at Harry in surprise. "We weren't expecting to see you for at least a week or two. Did something happen last night?"

"There's been a change of plans; I'm leaving."

"What do you mean you're leaving? Are you heading off deeper into the mountains to go hunting for trolls or something equally dangerous?" Sirius demanded with a frown of confusion.

"Agil came for me," Harry replied as he smiled a smile filled with so much joy and hope that it made his emerald eyes sparkle and shine like the gemstones they resembled. "He never gave up on me, even after all this time."

"You think maybe I can tagalong for the ride?" Sirius requested hopefully after noticing the abrupt change in his godson's demeanor. "I'd like to meet the man that earned your unwavering loyalty, inspired your unflinching dedication, and helped make you the fine young man you are."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

"Okay," Harry agreed as his grin grew even bigger. "Moony, you can come too if you want; someone will need to keep Padfoot in line."

Both older wizards laughed at the teasing quip as they cleaned up their game and headed upstairs to grab their things on the off chance that they didn't return to the Garden Chamber any time soon. As he waited for the two wizards to join him, Harry opened his menu in order to reply to Agil's message and to ask Hermione another question (writing Agil's in romaji out of habit and unconsciously addressing him as father due to that being how he'd thought of the man for so long).

_I have no clue where I am, tousan; aside from knowing that I'm in Scotland somewhere.  
They've kept me locked up here for the past four years and have only let me out once a  
year with an escort to buy my school things bar the time the headmaster took me to the  
Ministry to testify against a man that tried to shatter me a few years ago. _

_Anyway, don't go anywhere. I'll come to you this time. I just have to sneak out first._

_Hermione, can I ask you to do me a really, really big favor? Can you go stand in the  
middle of a large empty room or out in the middle of a small field? I have a way to  
Teleport myself and others to your location but I don't want to crash into anything  
irreplaceable because I'll be bringing Hedwig and Mendou with me since I don't know  
how long I'll be away from the forest and Padfoot and Moony are coming with me too._

_So if you can do that for me, I'd be forever grateful. _

Sirius and Remus returned just a few seconds after he sent off the message; Gaki riding on Sirius's shoulder. Once the two men reached the bottom of the stairs, the trio headed for the escalator and the exit (Mendoukusei trailing after Harry out of habit despite the fact that Harry hadn't bothered to clip his lead line in place). Once they reached the second floor, Sirius began leading the way towards a secret passage on the third floor that led out of the castle and into Hogsmeade so they could sneak out of the castle.

Unfortunately, they were waylaid within inches of their destination by Professor McGonagall who informed Harry that Headmaster Dumbledore was looking for him. Frustrated by the summons, Harry half considered just teleporting directly out of the castle but decided against it in the end because he knew that he had to wait for Hermione's confirmation first. Growling silently beneath his breath, Harry grudgingly followed his Head of House down to the Great Hall where Dumbledore was waiting for him after he passed Hedwig to Remus to hold (so that he didn't jostle his familiar in his irritation).

"Mr. Potter, I thought I had made it perfectly clear to you that you were to cease your illicit forays into the Forbidden Forest," Dumbledore began the moment he saw Harry enter the room.

"I will not stay out of my rightful home; as an acknowledged hunter and member of the forest's centaur herd, I have every right to travel freely beneath the trees," Harry replied as he stopped just inside the door and crossed his arms over his chest in irritation due to the abrupt reminder that someone had placed some kind of tracking device or spell on his person or on something he owned and he'd still not figured out what had been tagged. "It won't be an issue after today, however, as I have no plans to venture into the forest for the remainder of the summer."

"I seriously doubt that the centaurs adopted a human into herd due to their dislike of humans in general," Dumbledore countered as he frowned at Harry over the top of his glasses. "I am, however, pleased to hear that you've finally decided to listen to reason and intend to remain here inside of the castle for the remainder of the holidays though."

"First of all, I am not a liar; I've been a full-fledged member of the herd for over a year now and I'm afraid that you completely misunderstood me, Headmaster Dumbledore," Harry fired back without missing a beat. "I only stated that I will not be venturing back into the forest for the duration of this summer. I never said anything about staying in this glorified prison for another minute and was in fact on my way out the door when Professor McGonagall told me that you wished to speak with me and since I dislike rude people in general, I came to see what you wished to see me about."

"You do not have my permission to leave the school, Mr. Potter."

"I wasn't asking for your permission. I am leaving and there is nothing you can do to stop me. I have played nice and followed your rules for four years now and you have yet to make good on your promise to find me alternate housing for the holidays that you gave to me when I first woke up."

"You have not 'played nice' during the last four years and you have not followed all of the school rules or orders you have been given. You've needlessly taken the lives of numerous creatures that live upon the grounds, repeatedly ventured into the Forbidden Forest even after you were told that students are not allowed in the forest, and you have refused to give up on your delusional belief that you have been trapped here in some kind of perverse game. You will remain here in the castle until you are no longer a danger to yourself or to our world."

Under normal circumstances, Harry was a very reasonable person. However, Harry had been pushed to the breaking point time and time again over the past four years (most especially during the past two) due to his inner turmoil and the constant pressure to give in and conform to the beliefs of those who chose not to see past the tip of their noses. Now, as he stood on the brink of finally finding what he'd been looking for since the day he'd woken up in this castle; Albus Dumbledore was trying to keep him from his family. By the time Dumbledore finished speaking, Harry was seeing red and his magic was swirling around him in response to the maelstrom of his emotions.

"I will not allow you to keep me from my father any longer," Harry hissed in pure fury through clenched teeth. "I have been in far more danger residing inside of your precious castle than I ever was out in the forest amongst the monsters. I'm beginning to believe that the ultimate monster in this world is you, Headmaster Dumbledore."

"I am sorry you feel that way, Harry, but I can not and will not let you leave. One day you will thank me for protecting you from yourself."

"I told you not to call me that; my name is James and I will defend myself if you attempt to stop me from leaving," Harry declared tightly as he continued to glare at the headmaster.

Suiting actions to words, Harry opened his menu and began equipping himself with the battle armor he'd not worn since the day he faced the Skull Reaper with the others almost four years earlier, his silk rope (because he didn't want to kill Dumbledore even if he was forced to fight the man), and his scarred dragon scale shield. He didn't bother taking out his wand or his dirk; he'd fight this battle on his terms to his full capabilities.

"I am sorry it has come down to this, my boy, but if you will not see reason then you leave me no choice," Dumbledore intoned with a regretful tone that grated on Harry's ears as the bearded wizard drew his wand.

The moment the headmaster palmed his wand, Sirius stepped forward and growled, "If you raise your wand against my godson, House Black will declare war upon House Dumbledore for threatening the legal heir of House Black and then take you to court for attempting to steal my heir from me by claiming guardianship of my godson while I was wrongly imprisoned for a crime I did not commit. If that isn't incentive enough to allow my godson to leave with me, his rightful guardian, then as the rightful Regent of House Potter through blood adoption, I will renounce you and sue House Dumbledore for Line Theft under the charter of sixteen-fifty-three and see that you rot in Azkaban for imprisoning the last remaining heir of House Potter against his will."

"Sirius, be reasonable…"

"You're telling me to be reasonable?" Sirius demanded as he cut the older wizard off. "I'm not the one currently pointing my wand at the fourteen year old heir to two Ancient and Noble Houses in an attempt to keep said heir imprisoned against his will."

"I am trying to protect the child from himself…"

"It is not your job to protect him! I am his legal and magically bonded godfather!"

Dumbledore's response was to silently stun Sirius when the canine animagus was least expecting it; causing Gaki to let out a startled screech and take to the air when Sirius dropped like a rock before he settled on Remus's shoulder even as the former werewolf cast the counter spell to wake up the downed wizard.

That was Harry's signal to start the battle as a blanket of calmness descended over him and cut him off from the rage he felt over Dumbledore's under handed attack on his godfather. A wave of his left hand had a transparent gold shield that would prevent anyone else from interfering in their fight shimmering into place around both Harry and Dumbledore. The rest of the adults in the room were left shifting uncomfortably as they watched the battle that many of them felt was four long years in the making.

Now, while most people would think that Harry wouldn't stand a chance up against a wizard of Dumbledore's caliber, they'd be mistaken. For while Dumbledore was a powerful wizard in his own right, his repertoire of spells was limited to the structured spells that he had learned through the years and his power shackled by the inflexible mindset he'd fallen into in his old age. Harry, on the other hand, was limited only by his own beliefs and his beliefs had been shaped in an environment that had allowed him to do the impossible without ever knowing that it was impossible.

Harry had also been powerful in his SAO skills four years ago when he'd reached level eighty-two within the game and he'd continued to grow over the past four years. And while he hadn't specifically worked with his SAO skills, he had exercised his core and body continuously during that time and increased his reactions times, his accuracy, and his stamina. The only true difference between Harry's skills and Dumbledore's skills at this point was that Dumbledore had years of experience on Harry.

The fight, once it started, lasted five minutes.

Four and a half minutes of which Dumbledore fired a wide assortment of spells that never connected with their target as Harry dodged the spells using Sprint and Teleport, deflected them with his shield, or blocked them with an assortment of wandless elemental attacks. When Harry finally bothered to counter attack, he used four simple traps to capture Dumbledore and disarm him; a flying lasso to snag the man by his beard and yank him off his feet, a net trap to prevent him from moving or casting another spell, a Lip Trap to keep him from speaking, and a second flying lasso to snag the wizard's wand right out of his hand. The golden shield dropped the instant Harry's hand untangled Dumbledore's wand from the trap.

"I am leaving, now," Harry declared in a voice laced with power as his magic continued to swirl around him. "If you are a smart man you will leave me alone for the rest of the summer and I will return on the first with the rest of the students. If you send me so much as a single letter or dare hunt me down using the tracking spell that I know you placed on me or something I own, I **will** lay waste to this castle. I am through playing games. I am not your little personal pet celebrity that you can lock up in this wretched castle until you feel the need to place me on a leash and trot me out for the public to see once or twice a year."

Harry paused for a moment and drew himself up straighter as he proclaimed, "I am Hunter Bellator; adopted two-legged colt of Firenze and Willow and Dragon Slayer James the Reckless; the self-adopted son of Agil the Merchant. And I will _not_ be kept a prisoner inside of this castle for even one minute longer."

At that moment, Hedwig let out a loud screech in response to Harry's anger and the teen quickly got rid of his shield and armor before he turned away from the fallen headmaster so he could retrieve the now irritated occamy from Remus and settled her half in his arms and half on his left shoulder as the message icon popped up to indicate that he'd just received a reply from Hermione. Harry took a minute to sooth his familiar before he opened Hermione's message.

_James, _

_Sorry it took so long for me to get back to you but it took us a while to make room in the  
middle of our sitting room so that you can teleport into the house where the neighbors  
won't be able to see you arrive. I'm standing right in the middle of the room right now, so  
I'm ready for you whenever you're ready to do whatever it is you're going to do._

_Hermione_

"Sirius, if you and Remus are still going with me, you'd better get over here; they are ready and waiting for us," Harry stated as he hit the reply button and typed out his reply.

Both wizards scampered across the room and latched onto Harry's unoccupied shoulder as he sent off his reply and toggled his menu to his Friend List so that he could use the map function to set his coordinates for the Teleportation in order to get away from Dumbledore as quickly as possible. He then dropped Dumbledore's wand on the floor as he glanced over the downed wizard towards the staff table and offered a polite, "Good day, professors; I hope you have a pleasant summer."

So saying, Harry wrapped their small group in the liquid blue magic of the Teleport Spell and just mere seconds later they vanished from the castle and reappeared hundreds of miles to the south in the center of an unfamiliar room in a second pillar of liquid blue magic. Harry immediately fell to his knees, pressed his free hand to his face, and curled himself around Hedwig as his anger over the Headmaster's audacity returned full force alongside mild case of magical exhaustion as he'd almost completely drained his MP Bar after Teleporting three people and an additional three animals across such a large distance to an unfamiliar destination. As he tried not to pass out or throw up, Harry let loose a steady stream of foul curses in Japanese.

Unseen by the teen, Remus approached Hermione and was quietly introduced to her parents before he slipped outside to cast an assortment of privacy spells and defensive wards around the property (after securing permission from the elder Grangers) in order to prevent anyone from eavesdropping on them and to thwart the Ministry from raising a stink about any magic that was being used in the area. It didn't take him very long as the spells were simple and straight forward (which meant they were easy to cast) and because the size of the property was rather modest he didn't have to cast each spell more than four times total. He would return just shortly after Harry finally noticed how much his friends had aged since he last saw them.

"_I don't know where you learned such language but if you don't stop spouting trash, I am going to wash your mouth out with soap, gaki,_" a familiar and much missed voice dryly promised in Japanese effectively cutting Harry off mid-rant.

"_It was Klein, tousan, he said it was important for every kid to know how to thoroughly curse out his enemies,_" Harry automatically tattled as he jerked upright and twisted around to stare up at an achingly familiar man that he hadn't seen in four years. Harry's eyes began to shimmer as he struggled to hold back the tears that filled them and clenched his jaw as a wealth of emotion washed through him as he simply stared at the man that had helped him to survive and taught him how to live. "_Is that really you, Agil?_"

"_I can't believe you just ratted me out, you snot-nosed brat,_" another familiar voice whined causing Harry to jerk his eyes away from Agil to stare at Klein.

"_Serves you right for teaching him that kind of language in the first place,_" yet another familiar voice retorted and Harry felt his heart plummet as he dropped his eyes back to the floor (unable to bring himself to look at the one who'd spoken) as he knew the person that voice belonged to was dead; he'd seen Asuna shatter with his own eyes.

Harry's tears spilled over as his face crumpled in despair over the realization that he should have known that finding Agil and the others after all this time had been too good to be true. If he had been able to think clearly in that moment, he might have teleported himself right back out of there so he could find some place to curl up and beg for death. Instead he buried his face against Hedwig's feathery scales and tried not to get sick all over the floor while his heart felt like it was shattering under the harsh blow.

"_James?_"

"I had thought you were real," Harry whispered hoarsely in a voice that cracked with emotion as he unconsciously switched to English (he had grown rather used to speaking his native language during the past four years). "You can't be real though because I saw Asuna shatter. I saw her and Kirito both die just before they took you all away and the world exploded all around me. I should have known better. I should have never gotten my hopes up. I can't do this any more. No, I refuse to do this anymore; it hurts too damn much. I'd rather die. I'd shatter myself if I could because I can't live like this any more."

"James, look at me, please," Agil commanded gently but firmly as he crouched down in front of Harry. "Have I ever lied to you? Have I ever not told you the truth when you asked me a question?"

"No, you promised me you would never lie to me and that you'd never withhold the truth from me," Harry slowly replied as he looked up as instructed and the man nodded in agreement.

"Asuna didn't die and neither did Kirito," Agil stated simply as he held Harry's gaze. "Asuna got shunted over to another server when Aincrad crumbled. The person responsible didn't have the best of intentions in mind when he saved her life but in the end, he did save her. Kirito's case was very similar; in that the server crashed before his Nerve Gear could give the command to destroy his brain. There were many other players that shattered on the lower floors at the same time as you saw Kirito shatter and they too were saved by the same stroke of luck."

Harry swallowed with some difficulty around the lump of emotion that had grown at the back of his throat as he reluctantly tore his eyes away from Agil and glanced at the other individuals standing around the room watching him with tearful smiles (both girls) or relieved smiles (the two younger men). As he stared at them, he finally began noticing the little changes to their appearance that hadn't been there when he'd last seen them; their hair slightly different (longer, shorter, or a different color), new stress and laugh lines that hadn't been there before, and a depth of emotion in their eyes that couldn't be conveyed through the Nerve Gear.

It was evidence that they'd grown older since the day Aincrad had fallen. Kirito even looked taller; he was still shorter than Klein but taller none-the-less.

After studying the others, Harry glanced back at Agil and noted the same changes in the older man before his eyes flicked up to take in the green diamond above Agil's head and the pair of bars (one gold and one green) sitting off to the side (indicating that Agil was classified as a human player without Harry needing to initiate the change from NPC to human player). He then opened up his Player Menu and toggled over to his Friend List a second time to stare at the top five names on his list; his eyes not so much reading their names as taking in the fact that they were no longer grayed out and that each of them had a green dot beside them indicating that they were 'online'.

Closing his eyes, Harry took a deep breath to center his emotions as he closed out his Menu and gently untangled himself from Hedwig so that he could set her down on the ground before he catapulted himself at Agil; knocking the man back onto his butt as he wrapped his arms around his neck and buried his face against his shoulder. Seconds later, tears were pouring down his face again; though this time they were tears of sheer relief and pure joy. It didn't take long before words were flowing just as freely from his lips.

"Everything's been all messed up since SAO ended. I woke up all alone in an unfamiliar room without my Nerve Gear, still looking as if I'd never left Aincrad, with my Player's Menu still working, and my Inventory still carrying everything I had when the game ended. Then perfect strangers began showing up and trying to tell me that I was a wizard with magical powers and that my parents had been murdered by an evil wizard when I was a baby but that when the wizard tried to kill me, I defeated him instead…"

Everyone listened with mixed emotions as Harry continued to pour out his entire story to Agil. He spoke in depth of his insecurities and frustrations, of pushing everyone away, and of pushing himself in order to clear the 'game' and how he never seemed to get any closer to winning the 'game' or winning his way free so he could find them. Sirius, Remus, and Hermione were just as caught up in the story, as while the two men had learned much about the two years Harry had lived inside of Aincrad and Hermione had learned a few small tidbits of that time as well, they had not heard all of the things that James had gotten up to in and around Hogwarts over the past four years (though Sirius had known far more than the other two since he'd spent the most time with the teen).

By the time he reached the confrontation with Dumbledore that had taken place just before they arrived, Harry was worn out emotionally as well as still slightly exhausted magically. He hadn't once relinquished his hold on Agil throughout the entire tale; though he would still refuse to admit that there was any snuggling involved if it was brought up within his hearing.

"…I was just so angry. He wasn't going to let me leave so that I could come here to find out whether or not you were real and I just snapped. After he stunned Sirius because Sirius was trying to make him let me leave, it was like I was standing in front of the Frost Dragon or the Mossy Wyvern again and I felt cut off from everything as I stopped holding back. The battle seemed to drag on forever even though it was over in five minutes tops; I was just so desperate and determined to win no matter what though and then it was over. The last thing I told him was that I was through playing games and that if… if he didn't leave me alone… I'd raze the castle. Told him I wasn't his pet too… and that I wouldn't be… his prisoner… anymore."

Harry drifted off to sleep at that point; the not quite fifteen year old no longer able to force himself to remain awake when he was feeling safe and content at last now that he'd finally found Agil after all this time.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Otousan/tousan – father

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

* * *

**10-11-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	38. Clarification

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Clarification

_Saturday, June 21, 2025 3:15 PM_

"Heh, the little gaki always looks so cute when he falls asleep snuggling with you," Ryoutarou quipped with a smirk as he walked up to run his fingers through James's hair, fingering the snow white strands that stood out so vividly against the black before he gave the braid just behind his ear the same treatment. The amused smirk slipped off his face seconds later as regret and guilt replaced his amusement. "It damned near tore my heart in half to see and hear him so distraught and full of despair after he first heard Asuna speak up and again as he spoke about what he's been through these past four years."

"He bottled everything up inside for a long, long time and only started speaking about bits and pieces of what was bothering him over this past year," the tall man with shoulder length wavy black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee that had arrived with James declared in a cultured voice that screamed wealth and privilege laced with a weary roughness that bespoke of hardships faced and a fondness for potent alcohol.

"Who exactly are the two of you? Why in the world did you bring those animals with you? Is that a baby wyvern looking to take a bite out of Agil's foot? And does that horse actually have wings?" Kazuto demanded once he'd shaken off the shock of seeing James appear in a familiar flash of blue light looking completely unchanged (aside from the white hair and a couple new scars) and witnessing him have an emotional breakdown that was far more serious than the one the kid had had when Kazuto had first met him after he'd gotten caught up in a glitch at level thirty inside SAO.

"That lovely little lady is Hedwig; James's familiar. She's actually a fully grown occamy, not a wyvern, though James swears up and down that occamies are distant relatives of both wyverns and dragons. She's very intelligent and will take offense if you insult her so be careful of how you address her," the man corrected as he briefly glanced down at the creature in question. "The owl's name is Gaki; I bought him for James three years ago but Hedwig doesn't like to share so he's more my owl than he is James's. And yes, the horse has wings; he's a winged horse and the reason he tagged along was because he adopted James back in September and thinks James is his mother. James named him Mendoukusei because of all the trouble he caused at the time."

"And you are?" Asuna prompted when the man seemingly avoided introducing himself.

"Ah, right; please forgive me, my mind tends to be easily distracted and I am prone to bouts of forgetfulness. I am Sirius Black, James's godfather, and the gentleman standing behind me is Remus Lupin, James's honorary uncle. We were both close friends of James's parents before they were killed."

"Which one of you received custody of James after his parent's died," Gil demanded curtly as he cracked his knuckles in a show of intimidation while trying to avoid jostling the sleeping teen still draped over his shoulder and Kazuto was immediately reminded of Gil's threat to punctuate the words he wished to share with James's 'caregivers' with his fists.

"Neither," Sirius sighed as he ran a hand over his face. "I was framed for murdering thirteen people and accused of betraying James's parents before being thrown into prison for ten years without a trial. The one responsible was the man who'd tried to kill Harry on Christmas morning in his first year; Peter Pettigrew. The truth came out during his trial and I finally received a trial of my own and was released when found innocent. I've spent the last three and a half years since then healing and trying to get to know my godson."

"My circumstances were a little more complicated," Remus stated once Sirius had finished. "There are laws in my world against certain types of individuals from taking custody of a child regardless of age. My former condition meant that I was one of those not allowed to take guardianship of little James. I was also prohibited from visiting him by both the law and the people with whom he'd been placed. I didn't meet him again until a year and a half ago when I joined Sirius and James at the school for the winter holidays after Sirius pestered me for several months."

"Damn. I was hoping to vent some of my frustration," Gill muttered as he gently pushed Hedwig's head out of the way (the occamy had gotten right up in his face to study him) so he could stand up.

"Would you like me to show you to the guest room so you can tuck the poor young man into a bed where he'll be more comfortable?" Mrs. Granger inquired as the rest of the men slowly began putting the furniture back where it belonged under Mr. Granger's direction.

"No thank you, Granger-san. It took me four years to find James and I'm not quite ready to relinquish him yet least he vanish the moment I take my eyes off him. He's also prone to nightmares and waking up in yet another strange room all alone will only confuse and frighten him given everything he's experienced during the past few years on top of the rather emotional morning he's had."

"I should have considered that, I guess I'm still reeling from the young man's rather extraordinary tale. Hermione, dear, why don't you go grab a couple of pillows from the guest room and a light blanket from the linen closet so we can make the young man a bed out here on the couch for now."

"It appears that we've all missed lunch during the commotion," Mr. Granger stated once the room had been restored and he glanced around at the number of individuals crowded into the room. "I hope all of you will stay and join us for an early tea to make up for our lack of planning. It won't take but a few minutes to order some take out."

"Please allow me to take care of the meal, Mr. Granger," Sirius insisted before he turned to speak to an empty patch of floor. "Dobby?"

Kazuto thought the man had lost his mind right up until a strange creature with large floppy ears, a long thin nose, and electric green eyes the size of tennis balls suddenly appeared in the spot where the man had been looking. Only the years spent navigating various virtual realities with all sorts of oddities and wonders prevented the nineteen year old from jumping and crying out like the older two Grangers did. Though that didn't mean Kazuto wasn't feeling out of his depth as the morning had basically been one shock after another and while not all of the shocks had been negative they were all rather overwhelming.

"Master James's mangy old flea bitten father dog called for Dobby?"

"I wish you'd stop calling me that you overinflated garden gnome with a grudge," Sirius groused petulantly as he pouted at the creature. "But yes, I called you, Dobby. Everyone missed lunch in the madness that followed James's duel with Dumbledore and I wanted to ask you if you'd be willing to make a hearty afternoon tea for the group. If you are busy, I can always have Kreacher do it instead; I just thought I'd ask you first since I know James promised to let you make all of his meals that weren't eaten in the Great Hall."

"Dobby will take care of everything," Dobby stated as he glared at the man with open suspicion.

"Brilliant, Dobby, I always knew you were the best house elf. Could you pop into Black Manor and grab a couple bottles of Rosmerta's mulled mead and a few butterbeers for the children while you're at it? If Kreacher gives you any hassles you have my permission to stick his nose in the corner."

The elf nodded eagerly before popping out of the room and Kazuto couldn't help but ask, "What in the world was that and why did it refer to James as his master?"

"That was a house elf," Remus answered as Sirius's mind seemed to have wandered off again as the man was watching Agil settle onto another couch before he transferred James from his shoulder to his lap and made the fourteen (nearly fifteen) year old comfortable with Hermione's help. "They are a domesticated species of brownie that developed a co-dependent symbiotic relationship with magicals some six or seven hundred years ago. Wild brownies love to cook, clean, and fix little things around the house in exchange for a place to sleep, a few crumbs of food, or a bit of brightly colored fabric (providing said fabric isn't actually a piece of clothes) but they rarely ever stay in one place for very long."

"House elves are the same way but unlike their wild cousins, house elves are not free to come and go because they've become dependent upon wizardkind for the magic they need to survive while brownies are able to live on the magic in the air. So, an elf will willingly bind itself to a wizarding family or to a magical building and will happily take care of the family and the house in exchange to the magic it gains through the bond. At first glance it looks like slavery but without the magic they gain from the bond an elf will slowly go insane and will eventually suffocate to death because magic is like air to an elf."

"Dobby is one of three elves that bonded with James; that is why Dobby calls James his master," Sirius added, proving that despite appearances he'd been following along with the conversation. "James actually saved the elf from a different kind of madness by tricking his former master into selling the elf to him as the payoff on a rigged bet."

"What did you mean when you said he saved him from a different type of madness?" Rika asked curiously as she spoke up for the first time since James and the others arrived.

Sirius grimaced at the question but dutifully answered, "In order to answer that I'm going to have to give you a little background information. First, you need to know that there are many different types and branches of magic that exist; a few examples are light magic (all magic that is associated with positive emotions), dark magic (all magic associated with negative emotions), neutral magics (any magic that is not associated with any emotions), and mind magics (magic that can influence one's mind)."

"Additionally, all types of magics have spells that fall into one of three categories; positive (healing or constructive spells), negative (harmful or destructive spells), or benign (spells that are neither constructive nor destructive). Around a quarter of all existing spells are listed as benign because they have no true impact on a person or the environment. The rest are fairly evenly divided between positive and negative. Furthermore, some types of magics have certain stigmas associated with them. An example of one such stigma would be the insanity that has been linked to the use of negative dark magic. The more you use those types of spells, the less sane you become."

"Families that specialize in negative dark magics over multiple generations are especially susceptible to the taint of insanity as magical affinities and stigmas are passed down through the blood. My family is a prime example. Out of the most recent six generations of Blacks, of which there are over thirty individuals, there have only been around five of them that were considered moderately sane and I am sorry to say that I can no longer be counted as one of them but in my defense, my insanity came from influences out of my control as I was born with an affinity for positive light and dark magics and tended to avoid the darker spells in my effort to distance myself from my family and my family's heritage."

"My mother, on the other hand, was always more than a bit off her rocker but during her later years she went, if you ladies will pardon my language, bat shit insane. Mother loved the dark magics and particularly loved using negative dark magics; she was most fond of what we call the Unforgivables. The Unforgivables are made up of three spells that require pure malice and ill-intent in order to cast them. You have to want them to work in order to cast them properly and you have to mean them for them to actually work as they are intended."

"The first is called the Imperius Curse and it is a spell that takes complete control of a person's mind and will; you must want to completely and utterly crush the person's will in order for it to work properly, otherwise they can break free of the spell. The only way to break a true Imperius Curse is for the caster to remove it or to kill the caster. The weaker the victim's will, the easier it is to keep them under the spell even if you can't cast the spell properly. The second spell is called the Cruciatus Curse and it is a spell that causes pain; you have to want to make your victim feel pain and you have to enjoy seeing them writhe with in pain to cast it properly. The spell attacks every single nerve in your body at the same exact instant and begins eating away at your nerves."

"The longer you are under the spell the greater the pain and each successive application of the spell magnifies the pain caused by the spell threefold. The pain itself is indescribable and the closest I can come would be to say that it feels like you are being repeatedly stabbed by millions of white hot needles as your flesh peeled from your body while the resulting wounds are salted as you are roasted over a bed of hot coals. It is enough to make you wish for death and more than one person has been driven out of their minds with that spell. If not treated right away, the damage done to the victim's nerves by the spell will become permanent and will continue to cause pain for the rest of the victim's life."

"The third and final curse is simply called the Killing Curse and it does exactly what it says; it kills. There is no defense against this curse; if it touches you anywhere on your body, it will rip your soul from your body in an instant. It is by far the worst of the Unforgivables because in addition to killing the victim instantly, it will rip and tear at the caster's soul. It is murder most foul and it doesn't matter if you are using it on another human or on an animal or insect; the result is the same because the spell requires absolute hate for everything your victim stands for and a desire to kill your target simply for the sake of killing."

"You are getting off track, Padfoot; you're supposed to be discussing the effects of magic on the house elf bond," Remus interjected while everyone else in the room was trying not to get sick over Sirius's descriptions of the Unforgivables Curses.

"Actually, that information is relevant and I was getting to the point," Sirius countered with a frown. "Now, where was I? Oh, yes, I remember now. Mother loved her Unforgivables and she was not stingy in applying the first and second one if you displeased her. She tended to save the last spell for the various pests that are found in all magical households and gardens because Mother couldn't stand vermin and barely tolerated the family house elf or her children. The more Mother used those spells, the crazier she got and the deeper the taint of insanity ran through her blood and magic. House elves live off the magic of the person to whom they are bound and if that person's magic is tainted, then the elf will grow tainted over time."

"Our family's house elf lived with Mother for years after my father and brother died and at the end of her life she was nuttier than a fruitcake. The elf grew worse as after Mother died when he bound himself to her magical portrait which carried the taint of her magic in it and continued to drive the elf even further round the twist both through her portrait's insane mutterings and the tainted magic that clung to it. The best thing to do would be to put the old elf out of his and my misery but I just can't bring myself to kill him in cold blood; I'm not my mother. I also can't just find him a new family either because he knows too many family secrets."

"James saved Dobby from a similar fate because the family to which Dobby had previously been bound is ten times worse than Mother ever was and they married into my family. The Malfoys are a different kind of insane though and the stigma affects them differently; though I'm not certain if that will remain true for the youngest Malfoy, because he's half Black and that branch of the family produced the only witch that was worse than Mother."

It was at that point that Dobby the elf popped back into the room and snapped his fingers; causing the coffee table to triple in size. A second snap had a large assortment of sandwiches, salads, rolls, fruit, scones, and biscuits appearing on the table alongside a pot of tea, a pitcher of water, several bottles labeled as butterbeer and mead, a tea service, and enough plates, saucers, tea cups, water glasses, wine glasses, silverware, and napkins for everyone. A final platter of sliced smoked ham and roasted turkey breast was placed on the floor for Hedwig. More than one of the seven muggles in the room gaped at the veritable feast and struggled to wrap their minds around how quickly it had been made.

"Thank you, Dobby; you have outdone yourself as usual. I will call you if we need anything further," Sirius informed the house elf before he popped away with a short bow.

"There are a few things I'd like to discuss with you further," Agil stated as everyone else slowly ventured forward to fill a plate or pour out a drink once they got over their shock. "First, I'd like to know more about the dark wizard that killed James's parents and attacked him several times over the past four years. Secondly, I want to know everything you know about the people he lived with prior to ending up at the school and what they did to him while he lived with him. I know a few things that James told me years ago but I know he left out a considerable amount of information. And thirdly, I want to know why it doesn't look like he's aged a day in the five and a half years that have passed since I first saw the real James."

"I can do that but there are a few things I want to know first."

"Such as?" Kazuto asked when Agil just frowned at the man.

"Well, introductions would be nice for one; I have no idea who any of you are," Sirius drawled with a small smirk as he poured himself a glass of mead, crossed his ankles, and leaned back in the armchair he was sitting in.

Kazuto blinked before he laughed over the oversight on their part, "My apologies, Black-san, I had not realized that we didn't not introduce ourselves sooner. I am Kazuto Kirigaya. To my left is my fiancée, Asuna Yuuki. The young lady to your right is Rika Shinozaki. The gentleman beside her is Ryoutarou Tsuboi. And the gentleman currently being used as a pillow by our mutual friend is Andrew Mills, who prefers to be called Gil."

"A pleasure to meet you each of you; James spoke very highly of all of you," Sirius replied with a polite nod before his gray eyes zeroed in on Gil once more and sharpened. "You, on the other hand, if you are who I think you are based upon that name I heard James address you by earlier and my godson's current position; he spoke of you with a great deal of respect and affection. Now, I've not been the best of godfathers to the young man curled up on your lap but that doesn't mean I don't take my duties to him seriously or that I've allowed myself to shirk my duties since I was discharged from the hospital after I was released from prison."

"Is there a point you're trying to make?" Ryoutarou interrupted impatiently.

"I thought I told you to behave yourself," Rika admonished as she lightly smacked him on the arm.

The wizard was unperturbed by the interruption and continued without even acknowledging Ryoutarou's rudeness, "I know my godson sees you as something of a father figure; something I heard an untold number of times straight from his lips, no less. What I want to know is; what do you intend to do about that? As much as I loved that boy's father, who was my brother in all but blood, I realize that James never got the chance to know his father as his father and I can't begrudge him his choice in finding a suitable replacement. All boys need a man to look up to. However, if you hurt him or worse if you break his heart by rejecting him and his affections; there is no where on earth that you can hide where I won't find you and show you just what happens when you piss a wizard off."

Gil steadily met Sirius's gaze as he replied, "When I first met James, he wore the face of a twenty year old man and carried himself like an adult; with complete and utter confidence despite being rather shy. We bonded instantly over a satisfactory trade and a promise of Japanese lessons. Five weeks later, a job went wrong and I spent close to four days tracking down James with the help of Kazuto and at the end of the trail we found an emotional, blood covered nine year old in the middle of a mental breakdown after he'd just had his innocence crudely and cruelly stripped from him by a game. A game he never should have been able to get his hands on and a game he had considered his home because the people he lived with made it perfectly clear to him that he was unwanted and unloved."

"I took him home with me and I spent the next four or five months helping him put himself back together piece by piece. I helped him up each time he fell down, I comforted him through his many nightmares, I supported him in his endeavors, I pushed him to do his best, and I did my best to provide him direction whenever he needed it. Once he found himself again, I continued to stand by him and watched him flourish. Each time he came home injured after his latest battle, I cleaned and bandaged his wounds while listening to a blow by blow recount of the battle. I fought at his side many times and trusted him with my life as much as he trusted me with his."

"When the game ended, I spent three years searching from one end of Japan to the other for James armed with nothing more than a hand drawn picture and his player name. I did not think to look beyond Japan's borders at the time because the Sword Art Online software was not supposed to have been distributed outside of Japan. Just over three weeks ago, I willingly left my café in the hands of my wife to fly halfway around the world to follow up on a flimsy lead without knowing whether or not it was a legitimate lead just because there was a slight chance it was a real deal."

Gil trailed off for a moment as he glanced down at the small teen still sleeping peacefully on his lap before he returned his gaze to the wizard sitting across the room as he continued, "He started out as just another player trapped in the game, quickly became an important friend with whom I enjoyed trading stories, and somewhere along the way he became the son I never had but always wanted. The only reason I never told him that I saw him as a son was because at the time I was unsure how he saw me and feared that he would push me away the moment I made my feelings known due to his unpleasant childhood."

"After hearing him call me father earlier, I will have no trouble telling him what he means to me now. However, Mr. Black, as his godfather I'm certain that James will have a special place in his heart for you; if he doesn't already since he trusted you enough to drag you along today. And to avoid any future misunderstandings between the two of us; if you ever hurt the young man on my lap, there won't be enough of you left to bury when I'm finished with you and not even your magic will save you from my ire."

"Ah, I see we understand each other perfectly, Mr. Mills," Sirius replied casually as he saluted Gil with his glass before taking a sip. "One more question and then I'll see if I can't give you some of the answers you requested. Do you intend to seek custody of my godson?"

"I don't know. If that is what he wants, then I will fight tooth and nail to gain guardianship. If he is happy with the status quo, then I will be content to leave things as is. Why do you ask?"

"Right now, Albus Dumbledore is James's legal guardian in the magical world and even though we've spent the past nine months trying to have his magical guardianship returned to Sirius, as his godfather, there is no guarantee that the man will relinquish guardianship," Remus promptly explained when Sirius glanced at him. "So long as Dumbledore retains guardianship of James, the man is well within his rights to lock him up inside of Hogwarts until the day he turns seventeen or for the rest of his life if the man gets a licensed healer to declare James mentally unstable. The latter of which is something that we suspect Dumbledore has at least considered on a handful of occasions based upon things the man has said over the past three and a half years."

"Is there any way to prevent that from happening?" Asuna demanded as she brought Gil a plate of food after noticing the older man hadn't yet eaten.

"There are several ways but only one that would work simply because of who Dumbledore is and how much political weight his name carries. From what I understand, Petunia never filed for custody of James in the muggle world and Dumbledore didn't think it necessary to bother with the muggle government and so never applied for guardianship of him on the muggle side. That means that James is currently floating in a gray zone within the muggle world as he does have some records there but he essentially disappeared the night his parents were killed. All it would take to gain custody of James would be to fill out and file the paperwork with the Crown and fudge on the facts a bit. And because his aunt never claimed him, there would be no one to contest the guardianship."

"Taking guardianship of James would allow you to fight Dumbledore on equal footing and because James was muggle raised, despite being a borderline pureblood, you'd have more say in his life because that is the way it has always been in our world. With James being who he is and his current age, he'd also have a larger say in where he lived if it came down to a custody battle between you and Dumbledore," Sirius added before Remus could finish.

"Why haven't either of you filed for custody?" Rika inquired as she glanced between the two wizards.

"I'm a known drifter in the muggle world and they'd never grant me custody because I have consistently moved from place to place taking odd jobs here and there for the last sixteen or seventeen years," Remus explained. "Sirius, on the other hand, was a pureblood that was raised entirely in the magical world and therefore doesn't exist at all according to the muggle records because he had no contact with the muggle world prior to graduating Hogwarts."

"You do realize that I live in Japan, correct?"

"Doesn't matter where you live; wizards can travel to any destination worldwide in an hour or less depending on the method of travel and the direction you are moving in," Sirius countered with a negligently wave of his hand.

"Would James still be able to attend Hogwarts?" Hermione asked as she inserted herself into the conversation for the first time since James had arrived.

"So long as Dumbledore doesn't stuff things up any worse than he already has, then James fully intends to return to the castle come the first of September," Sirius replied with a shrug. "If push comes to shove and Dumbledore refuses to give James the space that he demanded after their duel, then there won't be a Hogwarts to attend because James swore what amounts to a wizard's oath to tear the castle to the ground."

"What!?" the others demanded in shock; none of them had guessed that the diminutive teen had been that serious about destroying the castle.

"You have to understand," Sirius pointed out wearily as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and stared into the amber liquid filling the bottom of his glass. "James hates that castle. He's been held there against his will for four years now and the only escape he had was the Forbidden Forest and they were trying to take even that from him. The only reason he stayed as long as he did was because he didn't have anywhere to go or anyone to turn to and it wasn't until this past year that he actually started to truly trust me. You heard him earlier; he thought he was trapped alone in a game surrounded by fake people. Hermione changed that for him at the start of this last year when she brought him the one thing he'd been yearning for all this time; a mere possibility that he could find the five of you."

Several minutes of silence passed as the others digested that revelation before Gil spoke up once more, "As troubling as it is that James has developed a vindictive streak; you promised to answer my questions. And right now, I'm more concerned about his lack of physical growth and the presence of scars that should not have transferred from his virtual avatar to his physical body."

The nine adults and one teen would spend the rest of the night discussing the various theories and facts surrounding James's condition; the adults leaving the discussion of James's home life for another time when certain young ears weren't present.

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**10-11-15:** _Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes._


	39. Family

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Thirty-Nine: Family

_Tuesday, June 24, 2025 10:15 AM_

Albus Dumbledore was many things but even he knew that he was not perfect. He was just as human as the next wizard and he was just as prone to making mistakes. Something he'd been reminded of many times throughout his lifetime and each time he forgot that truth, he felt the regret and guilt weigh down his soul the moment he was reminded. And though he hated admitting to his mistakes or his faults, he never hesitated to do so because he knew that no good would ever come of lying to himself let alone the rest of the world.

As he saw it, his two biggest faults were his arrogance, something he'd discovered in his long ago youth, and the fact that he was old and very much set in his ways. It was that arrogance and his tendency to do what he has always done that led to his most recent mistake; something Minerva, Filius, Pomona, and Poppy had taken great pains to remind him of when they'd untangled him from the acromantula silk net he'd been wrapped up at the end of his duel with young Harry Potter just two days earlier.

He'd suspected he was wrong the moment Harry had been surrounded with a swirling vortex of invisible magic in his fury after he'd told the boy that he would not be allowed to leave the castle. He'd known he was wrong when Sirius Black had threatened him with magical and legal repercussions. However, that knowledge hadn't stopped him from prodding the newly awoken dragon that was Harry's anger with a pointy stick. Specifically, he'd poked the dragon with his wand. By the time Albus realized he'd bitten off more than he could chew (right about the time Harry had surrounded the two of them with a golden shield after Albus had stunned his godfather) it was far too late to step back gracefully.

The five minute battle had been a lesson in abject humiliation. And Albus knew he'd been humiliated as Harry had played with him for four and a half minutes before handing him his hat in thirty seconds without using a wand. Albus knew, without a doubt, that if Harry had really wanted to, he could have killed him right then and no one would have been able to stop him. The ancient wizard was at least thankful that despite the child being willing to kill the various creatures he came across without any hesitation; he didn't seem to have reached the point where he could casually take another person's life.

Something he'd feared greatly after Quirrell's death three years earlier – despite the fact that the child hadn't taken any human lives since then.

That fight had also reminded Albus, and the rest of the staff present that morning, that Harry was far more powerful than he appeared to be. Oh, there had never been any doubt that he was strong due to the number of stunts the child had pulled through the years, but they had never once noticed the true wealth of power that was trapped inside of that child's body until he'd entered himself into the Tri-Wizard Tournament at the beginning of this past year and shown them a small fraction of just what he could do.

Only ever seeing Harry as a fragile child was part of problem as well. He may look like a seven or eight year old but the boy was nearly fifteen and filled with all the angst of any normal teenager and then some. All Albus had ever wanted was for the child to be a child until he was old enough to shoulder the burden of his destiny and in never seeing beyond Harry's appearance, Albus had failed to see what he'd always known in the back of his mind and deep in his heart but refused to acknowledge; Harry was not a child and he had never been allowed to be a child. And it was partially Albus's fault (the rest of the blame lying squarely with the Dursleys and their ill-treatment of the boy).

It didn't help that Albus had allowed himself to grow easily frustrated by Harry's firm belief that life was nothing but a game that he was trapped in. The boy had refused to believe any of what he'd been told about his parents, refused to believe that magic was real and not just some fancy trick, and refused to see any of the people he interacted with on a daily basis were real people. And so Albus had restricted the child to the castle in order to protect him and prevent someone from taking advantage of his apparent unstable mental health.

Hearing that Harry had thought Albus only saw him as some kind of rare pet had hurt; he had never intended for the boy to see the castle as a cage or a prison and yet that is exactly what he'd pushed the boy into thinking.

He had been a fool, forgetting that children needed room and freedom to be children. If he had remembered that sooner, he might not have driven the child to seek adventure inside of the Forbidden Forest throughout the past four years. Of course, the centaurs had been far happier since the child had taken to stalking the less than friendly beasts that made the forest their home and according to Hagrid the herd had taken to willingly protecting and helping the diminutive wizard – a first for the centaurs as they didn't really care for humans and disliked wizards in particular. They'd even gone so far as to adopt him, if what the child had said the other day was true.

Still, there never should have been a reason for the boy to seek adventure beneath the dark canopy of the magical forest in the first place.

"What a fool I have been, Fawkes," Albus murmured softly as he turned to gaze upon his phoenix. "Do you think he will ever allow me the chance to make up for my mistakes?"

The phoenix trilled a soft, short song of encouragement before settling his head back beneath his wing and returning to the slumber Albus had woken him from with his question. Albus sighed and smiled fondly at his familiar before he set his gaze on the unresponsive wand that was sitting on top of a pile of parchment on his desk. Picking up his favorite phoenix feather quill and a blank sheet of parchment, Albus put nib to vellum and began composing one of the hardest letters he'd ever have to write.

When he finished, he slid the sheet beneath the wand at top of the pile, pulled out a small bag from the bottom drawer of his desk that he set next to the wand, and rolled the entire packet up before securing it with a white silk ribbon that was tied using an intricate system of knots. The use of the color white a symbolic offering of peace and surrender within the wizarding world while the fancy knots used would let the recipient know the letter held important valuables.

Albus then rose to his feet and carried the large packet over to Fawkes and gently prodded his familiar to gain his attention before inquiring, "Will you please deliver this to Sirius Black for me, Fawkes? If I wish to start making amends for my mistakes, then it is best that I start by relinquishing the guardianship of the child back to his rightful guardian and returning the child's belongings to him."

The phoenix glanced down at the thick sheaf of parchment in Albus's hands before looking up again to meet the man's eyes as he bobbed his head in an affirmative while chirruping a brief note. The phoenix then rose up into the air with a graceful down sweep of his wings and gently snagged the roll from Albus's hands before he disappeared in a swirl of flames as he flashed away to make the requested delivery. Fawkes returned twelve minutes later holding a pristine white silk handkerchief embroidered with the Black family crest in his talons.

Albus felt tears of relief and hope prick the back of his eyes as he took the token from his familiar; Sirius had accepted the truce Albus had offered (a yellow handkerchief would have indicated a refusal while a red handkerchief would have been the declaration of war that Sirius had originally promised him).

* * *

_Tuesday, June 24, 2025 7:25 AM_

Harry stretched languidly with his eyes closed before he curled back up against the warm body he'd been sleeping beside just a moment earlier as a hand began to gently massage the back of his neck. He'd almost drifted back to sleep when it dawned on him that he always slept alone (aside from Hedwig and Mendou and neither one of them had hands with which they could give him a massage) and he bolted upright in confusion and panic until the sound of soft chuckling filled his ears just seconds before his eyes landed on Agil. The older man was watching Harry with warm brown eyes; the amusement in them just as plain to see as the grin on his face.

Harry just stared at him with wide eyes for several moments, his eyes flocking between Agil's face and the twin bars beside the man's head as the memories of everything that had happened after Hermione had contacted him the day after the students left finished filtering into his brain.

A hundred different emotions slammed into Harry once again and a minute later he was once again clinging to Agil while trying to suppress the sobs that wracked his body as he fought to keep from drowning beneath the roaring tide of his emotions. Harry was mortified; it had been embarrassing when he'd been nine and couldn't keep his emotions under control but it was down right humiliating to be nearly _fifteen_ and have no control. He tried to pull away when he realized he was leaking tears and snot all over Agil's shirt but the man refused to let him go; instead pulling him closer and gently rubbing his back.

"_You're fine right where you are, gaki,_" Agil rumbled softly. "_You've got nothing to be ashamed of and there is nothing wrong with you right now. You've had a difficult time of things and no one expects you to go on about life as if nothing happened._"

Harry stopped struggling and as he closed his eyes and pressed his face against Agil's chest. The gentle rise and fall of Agil's chest with each breath the man took brought Harry comfort as it was proof that he was not alone and that he wasn't dreaming. The constant thrum of Agil's heart filling his ears and the gentle pressure he felt as Agil continued to rub circles on his back slowly helped him to regain control of his emotions. And the faint scent of smoke, coffee, alcohol, dish soap, and sweat that clung to the man filled Harry's senses with each breath he took and drove home the certainty that he was no longer trapped inside of a server as no computer generated scent ever smelled so earthy and so utterly _human_.

Over the next several minutes, Harry's sobs subsided into sniffles and hiccups as his tears eventually dried up and the storm of his emotions finally calmed. The tingling numbness he felt in the wake of his emotional storm was soon washed away by the warmth he could feel radiating off of the older man. It wasn't long before his breathing returned to something resembling normal as he relaxed completely against Agil.

"_Feeling better?_"

"_Some… I guess._"

"_Give it time, gaki; it took me months to stop waking up in a cold sweat thinking that I was still in the game and that was with my wife and friends supporting me and reassuring me each day. You were given the raw end of the deal because you were alone amidst strangers that couldn't understand what you had been through with the added complication of magic confusing things and twisting your perception._"

"_I still hate that I turn into a blubbering cry baby every time you have to come save me._"

"_That's what happens when you bottle up and smother your emotions day in and day out for months or years at a time; the pressure grows until there is simply too much to hold and it all breaks free and overwhelms you. It is not healthy to suppress your emotions that way all the time, gaki._"

Harry didn't reply; he had no idea what to say. The Dursleys had pretty much ordered him to never express or show his feelings during the eight years he'd lived with them. His time in Aincrad had not exactly helped since he'd avoided dealing with any negative emotions for the most part because he'd reveled in being free from the Dursleys too much to think about the fact that he'd been trapped in a game that could kill him (the four or five month period after the glitch had affected him not withstanding). The years after Aincrad had been the worst though because the majority of his emotions had been negative and once again the people around him were disapproving of him expressing that negativity.

"_Don't let it bother you, James, we'll get through it together one way or another. I promise you, I won't leave you alone to deal with everything on your own now that I've finally found you._"

"_Okay._"

"_Good. Now, are you feeling hungry or did you want to just lay here for a bit longer?_"

"_Stay…? I… I missed you so much and I just… I don't want…_"

"_You don't want what?_"

"_Don't want to share,_" Harry confessed with more than a little embarrassment. "_The moment we get up, everyone else will want to talk to me or pull me away from you and I won't have a moment's peace._"

Harry felt Agil's rumbling laugh several seconds before the sound reached his ears and he ducked his head as his faced flushed red. Agil laughed again before reaching up to ruffle Harry's hair as he said, "_There's nothing wrong with taking the time to enjoy the peace and quiet while you can. In fact, this gives me the perfect opportunity to talk to you before you are distracted by the other's vying for your attention._"

"_What about?_" Harry asked warily as he pushed himself up enough to look Agil in the eye to determine whether or not he needed to be worried.

"_A couple of things… starting with the Dursleys._"

Harry couldn't help it, he flinched the moment his relatives were mentioned and he soon began to have trouble breathing as panic set in because he knew he'd never told Agil, or anyone else for that matter, the name of his relatives. He hadn't wanted anyone to know who they were because of the fear that they'd seek out the Dursleys and find out just how much of a freak he really was and then not want anything to do with him any more. That and he really hadn't wanted to name them because so long as he didn't give their names, then no one could further twist his perception of reality since no one else had ever mentioned their names (something else that had at one point helped convince him that the world he'd woken up in was not real).

"_Calm down, James, you have nothing to fear from them. You don't have to go back to them and no one is going to make you go back. The Dursleys can't hurt you any more._"

"_They never hurt me… they pushed me about sometimes and were always ordering me about but they never hit me or even really dared to touch me unless they felt they had no choice; said they didn't want my freakishness to contaminate them,_" Harry countered as he slammed the door shut on his emotions and let the blank mask he'd perfected over the past four years slide into place over his face.

"_They did hurt you, they may not have harmed you physically but they hurt you mentally and emotionally with the cruel things they told you starting with the lies they told you about your parents. And you can't tell me that they didn't say horrible things to you and about you because you told me yourself some of what they used to say to you. It was wrong of them to tell you that you should have died the night your parents died. It was cruel of them to call you a freak because you were born with magic; and yes they knew about your magic because your aunt knew your mother was a witch._"

"_You don't have to tell me everything they said or did to you right this minute, because I'm certain they didn't just limit themselves to verbal abuse. If you'd rather talk about it with someone else aside from me that is fine as well but you are going to have to talk about what happened while you lived with them with someone at some point. You can't just ignore the things they did and pretend it never happened; that won't help you. As important as that is, that wasn't why I brought up the Dursleys just now._"

Harry pulled his legs beneath him and sat up on his knees so he could see Agil's face better. Agil sat up a moment later and pulled Harry onto his lap. Harry tensed briefly in uncertainty before he relaxed as despite feeling uncomfortable with the direction their conversation had taken, he couldn't find it in himself to shun the comfort he felt in being held close by the man he'd long seen as a father. Even if a part of him believed that he was too old to feel the need to seek such comfort.

"_After you exhausted yourself two days ago…_"

"_I was sleeping for two days?_"

"_Yes. As I was saying, after you passed out from exhaustion two days ago, the others and I sat down and had several long conversations with your godfather and his friend. We learned a few things about how magic works but for the most part they filled us in on everything they knew about what happened the night your parents died, what information they had on the wizard that killed your parents, why the two of them did not take custody of you that night, how you ended up with the Dursleys, and some of the circumstances surrounding your removal from the Dursleys. They also told me what little they'd known about the Dursleys themselves._"

"_During one of those conversations, the matter of your guardianship was brought up and discussed. Apparently, the Dursleys never filed for guardianship of you after you were left on their doorstep and therefore they were never your legal guardians despite Mrs. Dursley being your biological aunt. After you were removed from their home, Dumbledore obtained legal guardianship of you within the magical world but didn't bother seeking guardianship of you in the non-magical world; meaning that you currently don't have a guardian on the non-magical side._"

"_Mr. Black mentioned that he has been working to have your magical guardianship transferred back to him since he was technically your magical guardian the moment your parents died due to his status as your godfather. However, due to the fact that he doesn't technically exist in the non-magical world, he can't file for guardianship on that side. If Mr. Black can't gain guardianship of you in the magical world and if no one else steps forward to claim guardianship of you in the non-magical world, then Dumbledore (as your guardian) is well within his rights to keep you locked up within the school or at his home if he so chooses and there is nothing anyone could do about it._"

"I will tear the castle apart stone by stone with my bare hands before I allow him to lock me up again," Harry hissed angrily as he unconsciously dropped his emotionless mask and slipped into English.

"If you didn't, I would," Agil promised as he reached out to lightly flick Harry on the nose. "I don't think that will be necessary though as there is another way to keep him from locking you away."

"How?"

"All we need to do is have someone file for guardianship in the non-magical world."

"It's hopeless then… no one would want me."

"_Gaki_," Agil huffed as he poked Harry on the forehead. "Do I look like no one to you?"

"But you already have a family."

"Yes, I do; and as far as I am concerned, you are part of that family. My wife has been eager to meet you ever since I first told her all about you. The others are just as willing to take you in and I know for a fact that Ryoutarou and Kazuto both think of you as a little brother."

"Um… who are they?"

"Ah, I forgot, you were sleeping when everyone was introduced. You knew Ryoutarou as Klein when we were living in Aincrad and Kazuto is Kirito. Asuna's real name is Asuna so her name should be easy to remember. Lisbeth's real name is Rika and my name is Andrew Gilbert but most everyone calls me Gil, though you're also welcome to call me Agil if you feel more comfortable using that name. Of course, I wouldn't mind if you called me father since I am hoping that you will not be opposed to me claiming guardianship of you in the non-magical world."

Harry jumped and his eyes grew so wide they almost fell out of his face before his insecurities had him furrowing his brow and biting his lip as he dropped his gaze down to his lap and quietly asked, "It doesn't bother you that I'm a… a wizard? Or that there is something wrong with me because I haven't grown at all in the last six years?"

"No, it doesn't bother me in the least that you are a wizard. In fact, it doesn't surprise me that you have magic inside of you because I always thought there was something special about you. As for your lack of growth, well there are a dozen and one theories that we came up with the other day on why your body seems stuck at the moment. A little research and a few tests should narrow down the possible culprit so that we can start looking for potential solutions."

"You really want me as part of your family?"

"Yes. I have considered you the son I never had but always wanted since the day you burst into our apartment in the middle of the night bleeding all over the place and bragging about taking down the Mossy Wyvern all by yourself."

"It was an awesome fight! He was a magnificent creature. He wasn't anywhere near as lovely as Hedwig though. Have you seen Hedwig? Isn't she just gorgeous? She's more than tripled in size since I bought her and according to the book I picked up on dwarf occamies, she's fully grown. She even dropped a clutch of eggs this last year but they didn't hatch because there were no male occamies at the castle and I don't even know where I would find a male occamy that would be a good enough match for my beauty."

"It would be so cool to raise a bunch of baby beautifuls; I bet they'd all be just as lovely as their mother. Hedwig would make a good mother too; did I tell you she adopted all three of Hagrid's dragons when they hatched? Well, the first dragon actually adopted her first and Hedwig barely tolerated her until Norberta, the dragon whose name was actually Norbert until we learned he was a she, just kind of grew on her. Norberta is huge now! Nearly as tall as a four story house and as long as ten lorries parked front to back! And she's only half grown! It's kinda funny to see Norberta still defer to Hedwig because of the vast size difference between the two of them."

"That reminds me, I wonder if Norberta's clutch hatched. We never did get a chance to go back up into the mountains to check on her what with everything else that happened during the last year and its not like I could have dragged Mendou up there while he was still determined to follow me around because he'd have become a dragon snack. I suppose the fact that Hagrid was busy hatching and raising the two Short-Snout eggs that I rescued after I was forced to kill their mother also meant that the man wasn't as determined to check on his first baby."

"I could have gone up to see her the moment the rest of the students left the castle but Hedwig was still healing and I didn't want to leave her. The bloody Death Eater damn near took her left wing off and almost killed her that night. If not for Willow and Firenze she'd most likely not have made it or if she had, she might have lost the use of her left wing completely but centaur magic and centaurian healing are all nature based and actually draw upon a creature's innate magic to help in the healing process. They fixed her right up for me. They healed me too; more than once."

Harry suddenly snapped his mouth shut at that point and blushed as he realized he'd been rambling and Agil started chuckling before reaching up to ruffle Harry's hair again. Harry grinned at the man as he tried to straighten up the mess that was his hair before he gave it up as a bad job and dropped his hands. The nearly fifteen year old wizard then took a deep breath and sagged forward against Agil's chest as it sank in that the man he'd long considered his father wanted him.

"So… will you take me back to Japan with you when you go? What about school? Can I still come and visit my friends? It took me over three years to actually let myself see them as friends and I don't really want to leave them behind now that I do. What about my godfather? What if he gets mad? What…?"

"Slow down, gaki," Agil instructed with another laugh. "Give me a chance to answer your questions. Yes, I'd take you back to Japan with me once everything is settled. Yes, you would still be able to visit your friends. Mr. Black is not going to be mad; he is aware that this might be the only way to keep you safe and happy and he knows he is welcome to visit us any time he wants or you can visit him here. As for school… that really depends on you. I'd like to see you finish your non-magical education so that your options aren't limited due to a lack of education. In regards to your magical education, you can continue at Hogwarts with your friends if that is what you wish or we can look at other schools or even see about hiring a private tutor."

"I don't know if I want to go back to Hogwarts. I don't want to leave Hermione and the others and if I left I wouldn't be able to spend time with the herd any more but I couldn't stand being trapped there all the time especially these last two years. My parents supposedly already paid for me to go there for all seven years though and I still have three more years to go."

"Well, we have plenty of time to figure things out later. Why don't we go see if the others are awake and get something to eat for now. I know the others have been anxious to see for themselves that you are alright as well as greet you properly since they didn't have a chance to the other day."

Harry pouted up at the older man until his stomach let out a loud growl and the pint-sized teen felt his face heat up in embarrassment as a blush spread across his cheeks while Agil simply chuckled.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Otousan/tousan – father

* * *

**AN:** _*Dusts off the cover to this story* See; not abandoned - just a little dusty. Anyway, we saw a brief interlude of what Dumbledore was thinking after his defeat and the rest of the chapter was shameless fluff as Agil and Harry bonded; both of them now aware of how the other feels about them. I'll be posting two more chapters this weekend and I believe the second one will answer a lot of questions that most of you had about what was going on with Harry &amp; his magic. And the reason why I'm not going to post more than three chapters on this story is because I am currently expanding the next arc to include more details (turning one chapter into at least three). _

_Also, chapters 1-14 were updated today w/ minor edits and any drops in word count were the result of me removing a bunch of unnecessary author's notes. Any changes made to the content of each chapter was minor (mostly just rewording of sections that were a little awkward) and there is no real need for anyone to go back and reread the entire story. (Unless you really wanted to...) Chapters 15-28 will be updated tomorrow along with the next chapter update and then chapters 29-38 will be updated on Sunday. _

_The last thing I'd like to do is thank everyone for their patience... well most of you anyway (my in box was flooded with requests for this story to be updated, after all). =p In any case, I do appreciate the fact that everyone has stuck with me and this story and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. ~ Jenn_


	40. Truce

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Forty: Truce

_Tuesday, June 24, 2025 11:25 AM_

Sighing in exasperation as Agil chuckled at him; Harry brought up his Player Menu, opened it to his Inventory, and quickly selected the Bag of Holding that held his clothes. He then changed out of the pajamas someone had dressed him into a pair of his favorite brown pants and a tan long-sleeved shirt (the same ones he'd worn in SAO). Agil reached out and pulled his shirt up a bit to reveal a portion of the scar that bisected Harry's torso right after Harry had switched his clothes out and frowned at the scar (Sirius had actually transfigured Harry's former clothes into pajamas so he'd not seen it previously).

"_When and how did you get that one, gaki?_" Agil demanded as he fell back to using Japanese out of habit.

"_Christmas morning a month and a half after Aincrad was destroyed. That was from the man that was hiding himself as the pet rat of another boy; he attacked me after Hedwig attacked him when he was in his rat form. No one knew he was a man until Hedwig attacked him. He hit me with a silent spell I couldn't see that cut me open. At the time, I hadn't known that there were invisible spells or that you didn't have to say the incantation out loud or I would have moved the moment he pointed the stolen wand at me._"

"_Any other new scars I should know about aside from the faint one I noticed running along the right side of your face?_"

"_I don't think so… no, wait; there's a few I suppose… I got the worst of them at the end of my second year when I was fighting Tentatio the Basilisk before I killed him with this huge marble sword I'd picked up from the white king that was destroyed at the end of my first year; his fang scored my right arm and pierced my right hip. The only reason the Basilisk's venom didn't kill me was because I used one of the Antidote Crystals you made me keep in my inventory, one of the Healing Crystals I had, and a couple of potions I had on hand plus whatever Madam Pomfrey did after I passed out._"

"_Why did you have a sword?_"

"_Didn't know where I could sell it at the time and I… I wanted to show it to you because I knew you'd like it. The thing is longer than I am tall and weighs even more than I do but all I had to do was prop it on the ground and hold it steady with my hand and the Basilisk stabbed himself in the mouth with it when he tried to swallow me. Then I damn near lost a foot and the tip of my nose when the Basilisk shattered and the sword dropped on my foot._"

"_Only you, gaki, only you,_" Agil sighed as he picked Harry up and swung him up onto his shoulders.

Harry snickered as he set his hands on Agil's bald head so he wouldn't fall off and took his first good look at the room he'd woken up in. His first impression was dark. So was his second. Then all he saw was green; green curtains hanging from the canopy of the four poster bed he'd woken up in, green sheets and bedding on said bed, green carpet, green upholstery on the furniture, green drapes on the windows, and green wallpaper. Interspersed with the green were silver accents; silver lamp holders, silver fixtures, silver curtain ties, and silver designs on the wall paper.

The last thing he noticed was the snake motif everywhere; wooden snake heads topping the bed posts, open mouthed snakes holding up the curtain rods, the arms of the chair carved to look like snakes, and even the door handle of the bedroom's door was that of a snake head. Inspection complete, Harry couldn't help but ask, "_Where are we? What's with the dark and spooky dungeon décor?_"

"_As I understand it, this is your godfather's house and it was the only place nearby where we could all fit without having to rent rooms for everyone and where your pets wouldn't draw too much attention. He locked up all of the rooms that are filled with the more dangerous items and your little elf friends have been fighting with Mr. Black's elf to clean up the rest of it._"

"_Oh. I know where we are now. Sirius told me about Grimmauld Place the first time I took him down into the Chamber of Secrets because the Chamber reminded him of this place because it was all dark, dank, and filled with snake statues. I thought he hated it here though._"

"_He does, but he gets a laugh out of watching the elves bicker and enjoys tormenting his mother's portrait with our presence in the house because she disliked non-magical people when she was alive. He also would not have felt comfortable in a non-magical hotel and wanted to keep all of us together because he knew you'd be unhappy being separated from any of us after we'd just found each other again._"

"_Sirius is really barmy at times but he's not a bad sort. He always spends the summer with me in the forest hunting monsters. He's also helped me with my spell casting but he's worse than Kirito when it comes to training practice. I swear sometimes it's like he's trying to kill me! Oh, and the centaurs taught me how to shoot a bow and arrow. Bane is the best archer in the herd; he can hit a half grown spider in the eye from over sixty meters away!_"

"_Firenze is almost as good but Firenze spends more time wandering through the forest tracking the other animals and monsters as well as collecting herbs and healing plants for the herd in his job… he's like herd's pharmacist, I guess, since he makes all of their medicines and stuff; his official title is Medicine Walker. Ronan on the other hand prefers studying the heavens because he's the herd's Stargazer; which is something like the cross between a seer and a priest as far as I can tell._"

"_It sounds like you enjoy spending time with the centaurs._"

"_I do. They never tried to keep me out of the forest and even helped me find different monsters to fight so I could get stronger. I've known Firenze the longest and he taught me a lot about the plants that grow in the forest and the animals that live there; especially the friendlier ones that Hagrid didn't talk about as much. He's also protected me from those monsters we've found that are too strong for me. I was adopted into the heard last summer; Firenze is my sire, Willow (she's Firenze's mate) is my dam and the herd's Healer, and Orsus, Caleo, and Breeze are my adopted siblings._"

"_James, I know it never bothered you to kill monsters in the game, even if it made you sad to shatter the dragons, but are you sure you're alright with killing real creatures?_" Agil asked cautiously as he carried Harry through the house and down the stairs towards the kitchen.

"_They weren't real to me at first so it never bothered me. Real creatures don't shatter and vanish when they die. At least they didn't until I woke up here. When I found out none of the monsters regenerated and that they had families like any normal creature, I stopped fighting every monster I came across and never killed any babies. The centaurs always made certain I hunted in different parts of the forest so that I didn't completely wipe out all of the more dangerous creatures and we've actually made it so that the forest is a lot safer and all of the creatures, including the monsters, thrive because there isn't as many predators competing for food._"

"_After Hermione confronted me about Ken no Sekai at the start of last year, I stopped actively seeking the various creatures just to fight them in the hopes of getting stronger. I still hunted with the centaurs at times and I didn't hesitate to battle those creatures that attacked first but I couldn't bring myself to hunt them anymore. It took me a while to accept the possibility that I'd been killing living, breathing creatures all this time but that was mostly because I chose to keep believing I was still in game because it hurt to think I'd been trapped in a nightmare of my own making all this time. The way I saw the world still slowly changed over the course of the year thanks to Hermione and the others. _"

"_I think the only monster I really regret killing is Fluffy. He was the three-headed hellhound that I faced in first year. At the time I didn't know that he was real or that he was Hagrid's pet and I'd thought he was the Dungeon Boss I needed to defeat to move up to the next level. He was actually just the first guardian. I felt guilty when I learned that Fluffy had been Hagrid's pet this last year. I apologized to Hagrid and was sure he'd hate me when he learned it was me that killed his pet and not the Two-Faced Voldemort but while he was upset, he didn't get mad. He said that Fluffy had been getting old and he'd had a good life._"

"_He also told me that he was glad that it had been me that killed him because he knew I wouldn't have made him suffer like the Two-Faced Voldemort would have. I ended up giving Hagrid Fluffy's Heart; which I'd picked up after the battle. He cried and thanked me for preserving a piece of Fluffy as something so beautiful. He made a really nice oak and glass case to keep it in and it sits up on his fireplace mantel. He was really happy when I promised him that I'd never hurt Norberta; he loves that dragon even more than he loved Fluffy._"

"_I'm proud of you for being mature enough to own up to your mistakes and that you understood the consequences of fighting the creatures in the forest even before you realized they weren't part of a game,_" Agil warmly stated as he patted Harry's knee before opening the kitchen door and ducking down as he walked into the room so he didn't smack Harry's head on the doorway.

Once they were through the door, Agil continued, "_I don't think there is anything wrong with hunting or with the reasonable and responsible culling of the more dangerous creatures but I wanted to make certain that you were alright with your choices in killing and hunting. Sirius had mentioned that you'd also collected a wealth of valuable creature parts that were useful in potions and rituals or were edible; something that told me you took the time to make certain the dead didn't go to waste rotting in the forest._"

"_That was mostly just habit because that was how I made my money in Aincrad. Plus much of what was dropped at the end of the battle was useful and it's not like I had to worry about maxing out my Inventory after I bought an unlimited Bag of Holding when I bought the first of my school supplies. And it wasn't like I could have left the dead where they fell anyway, since everything I killed over the last four years has shattered just like the monsters did in SAO._"

"_Hey sleeping beauty! It's good to see you up at last. I was beginning to think I'd have to fetch your feisty little girlfriend and get her to kiss you in order to get you to wake up,_" Klein, or rather Ryoutarou, declared as he bounded over to Agil the moment he heard Harry's voice and snagged the teen off the older man's back before proceeding to tickle him mercilessly.

Harry shrieked with laughter as the playful man's fingers hit all of the ticklish spots with practiced precision for several minutes before he suddenly found himself dumped on the ground when Hedwig took offense to the attack on his person and used her tail to trip Ryoutarou so that she could sit on his chest and get right up in his face as she hissed her displeasure at him. The others in the room burst out laughing over Ryoutarou's predicament (after they were certain the occamy wasn't really going to hurt him).

"_You're such a wonderful girl protecting me from the big bad man and you're just so gorgeous when you're defending me,_" Harry cooed around his continued laughter as he crawled over and began scratching Hedwig beneath her feathered crest. "_Isn't she just the most beautiful little lady you've ever seen, Klein?_"

"_I'd have to say she's the most dangerous lady I've met to date._"

"_I for one think she's preciously precocious,_" Asuna declared with a laugh as she swept Harry up off the floor and engulfed him in a hug. "_I am so glad that you're alright. I was so worried about you._"

"_I'm glad that you didn't die, Asuna. I thought I'd never see you or Kirito again._"

"_We're too stubborn to die so easily,_" Kazuto declared as he walked up next to Asuna and ruffled Harry's hair.

Seeing both of them together suddenly reminded Harry of the matching rings he'd seen them wearing just before they faced the Skull Reaper in battle. He also recalled that he'd promised himself he'd give the two of them a right good teasing the next time he saw them and he let a mischievous grin spread across his face as he noted the very real diamond ring sparkling from Asuna's left finger. Everyone grew wary the moment they saw that grin since they knew it meant that Harry was going to totally embarrass someone. And they were right.

"Kirito and Asuna sitting in a tree… k-i-s-s-i-n-g…" Harry sang out in English; his childish voice filled with laughter as both Kazuto and Asuna blushed bright red.

Kazuto then immediately turned on Ryoutarou, who'd only just managed to dislodge the six foot occamy that had been using his chest as a chair, and chased him out of the room while yelling, "Damn it, Ryoutarou! I know you're the one that put him up to that!"

Harry laughed and squirmed as Asuna gave him a noogie for teasing her. He was rescued a moment later by a laughing Rika which allowed Asuna to give chase to Kazuto and Ryoutarou. All of the other adults in the room laughed with him as Ryoutarou's yelps filtered into the room through the swinging door.

"I'm so proud, my godson's all grown up; teasing others and fingering someone else to take the blame for it without needing to lift a finger," Sirius declared as he pretended to wipe away a tear.

"That's because we all know that Ryoutarou was a bad influence on the gaki," Agil declared as he dropped down in the chair next to Sirius. "James used to be such a sweet kid until he met Ryoutarou."

"Are you sure you're talking about our James?" Kazuto countered with a snort as he reentered the room a few minutes later wearing a look of satisfaction. "If I recall correctly, he was causing trouble long before you brought him home; tormenting the members of the Army as well as pranking random adults right and left."

"They all deserved everything they got," Harry insisted once Rika stopped hugging him long enough for him to escape so he could grab something to eat. "Trying to tell me how to play the game from day one and then trying to keep me in the city just because I was a kid."

Any further comments were left unsaid as a ball of flames burst into the room directly above the table before fading away to reveal Fawkes the phoenix hovering just a few feet away from Sirius. Harry immediately recognized the bird as belonging to Dumbledore as he let out a hissing growl that was echoed by Hedwig as his eyes landed on the thick parchment roll that was clutched in the phoenix's feet.

"James, calm down," Sirius ordered sternly as he reached out to accept the parchment bundle. "I realize you are still angry with Dumbledore, and you have every right to be, but he's not seeking to cause problems right now."

"How do you know?" Harry belligerently demanded as he scowled at both his godfather and the phoenix while Hedwig slowly began stalking the hovering bird from the floor as she let out a second irritated hiss.

"Because he chose to tie the letter he sent to me with a white ribbon instead of a simple string. He basically just surrendered and is seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict," Sirius explained as he untied the ribbon and stuffed it in his pocket so it wouldn't get lost. He then unrolled the stack of parchment, set the small pouch and the wand that had been inside off to one side, and carefully read through the first page. Seven minutes later, he lowered the packet and pursed his lips as he called out, "Kreacher! Bring me Grandfather's lock box of correspondence tokens."

A crotchety old elf popped into the room and sneered at everyone before it flinched away from the occamy that had swung around to hiss at him the moment he appeared (Hedwig still disliked all house elves on general principle). The house elf then popped away to comply with the order Sirius had given and brought back a sealed mahogany box the size of a cigar box that he reluctantly passed to Sirius before he vanished once more. The older wizard then used his wand to unlock the box and withdrew a white silk handkerchief from inside before he shut the box and set it off to one side.

"What is that for?" Kazuto inquired curiously as he watched Sirius offer the piece of cloth to the waiting bird.

"It is an old tradition amongst most pureblood families to negotiate wars, treaties, and feuds through the use of tokens. The type and color of the token declares the intentions of the wizard or family sending the token. That tradition mostly fell out of use after the dark wizard Grindelwald killed off around twenty percent of the pureblood families back in the nineteen fifties and sixties before Dumbledore defeated him in the seventies. Voldemort only further decimated our ranks when he began killing purebloods, halfbloods, and muggleborns alike in the nineties until he was stopped eleven years after the turn of the century; completely disregarding all of the traditional rules of engagement."

"Now, there just aren't enough purebloods left that remember the traditions because the older generations were pretty much wiped out. My grandfather was one of the last born in those troubled times that still followed the old traditions until he died two years ago. Growing up, he'd made certain that my brother and I knew them in the hopes that those traditions would one day be revived in the later generations but there are so few left who can teach the children."

"Grandfather always said it was a real shame that the Wizarding Tradition and Etiquette course had been cut from the Hogwarts curriculum by Headmaster Dippet when he first took over running the school. Dippet had claimed it was the duty of the parents to teach the children proper manners (the man had ignored or forgotten that not everyone had someone who could teach them). The board of governors blocked all attempts to reestablish the class once the man retired because they had no wish to reinstate an 'antiquated' class that taught people things they should already know."

"Dumbledore is ancient even by wizarding standards (he was born in the late eighteen hundreds, after all) and while he is far more progressive than most of his generation was, he never stopped following the old traditions. He tied the packet he sent me with an unmarked white silk ribbon; symbolically meaning that he is personally seeking to make amends for his transgressions, rather than involving the entire Dumbledore family or the school as is his right as the head of his family and as the headmaster of the school."

"White traditionally stands for surrender or peace, that he used silk means that he is serious and taking the dispute between him and my godson seriously, the complexity of the knots used to secure the package indicated it held important information and/or valuables, and his method of delivery means that his intentions are honorable as no phoenix would ever involve itself in any form of duplicity – not even for its wizard."

"And what does your response mean?" Agil asked as the phoenix accepted the scrap of cloth and vanished in a flash of flames.

Sirius sighed and glanced down at the documents in his hand before he lifted his head and let his eyes seek out Harry's; the man unflinchingly holding the teen's angry emerald gaze as he answered, "I acknowledged and accepted his truce as the Head of the Family; the white in this case meaning that I'm willing to resolve the matter peacefully, the silk showing my sincerity, the family crest will let him know that I am speaking for my entire family, and the size of the cloth indicates that this matter is of utmost importance to my family."

"And your reasons for giving him that answer?"

"He signed over James's guardianship to me with no strings attached and sent me the original documents that he'd signed using a contract quill; which draws upon the user's blood as ink and magically binds the signer to the contract or document he is signing. He also sent me copies of James's school records for the last four years, copies of his medical records dating back to his eleventh birthday, several items he'd been holding onto that belong to James, and a Hogsmeade permission slip. The last item, once signed, will allow James to freely visit Hogsmeade Village with the other students during the course of the school year; something that had been denied to him the last two years."

"Oh, and he told me how he'd managed to tag James with a tracking charm so I can remove it," Sirius added before he pushed the small bag and the wand across the table. "Dumbledore wished me to inform you that this wand now belongs to you because you won its allegiance the moment you defeated the older wizard during your duel. The bag, on the other hand, holds everything of yours that was collected from the Dursleys the day you were removed from their home; including the strange machine you'd been hooked up to at the time."

The two wizards in the room were confused as to why Harry leaned back away from the bag and warily stared at it as if it contained a venomous snake instead of what should have been his childhood possessions and keepsakes. The five non-magical adults present (Ryoutarou and Asuna had rejoined them halfway through Sirius's explanation) knew exactly why Harry had reacted the way he had; they'd all had similar reactions at one time or another in response to seeing (or thinking about) the Nerve Gear that had once held their very lives in the balance.

"Is there something wrong?" Remus asked as he curiously inspected the mokeskin pouch without picking it up.

"I… I didn't own anything when I lived with the Dursleys aside from Dudley's old clothes. If… if they took things, then the Dursleys will think that I stole from them. Well, I did steal from them but I only took the computer and game stuff from the rubbish bin because I had wanted to see the magic that Dudley had mentioned since that had been the reason my uncle had trashed it in the first place. I know I shouldn't have but I just couldn't help it. They're going to be so angry that I still have it. And… and…"

"And for every single day during the two years that you wore the Nerve Gear, you had a death sentence hanging over your head," Kazuto quietly finished as he reached out and took hold of Asuna's hand.

"How did they fit an entire computer into such a tiny bag?" Ryoutarou inquired in the tense silence that filled the room as Kazuto's soft words stirred a wealth of negative emotions in all six of the SAO survivors present.

"Magic," Harry deadpanned as he tore his eyes away from the bag to glance up at the man.

"May I look through the things that Dumbledore saw fit to claim from your relatives on your behalf?" Agil inquired as he reached for the bag sitting in front of Harry. Harry just shrugged in response as he focused on the plate in front of him and pushed his shepherd's pie back and forth with his fork; his eyes studiously avoiding both the wand and the bag.

"Actually, James is the only one that will be able to take anything out of the bag," Remus pointed out after giving a soft cough to get their attention. "The bag is a mokeskin pouch and they're charmed so that no one but the owner can take anything out of it even though anyone can put things inside. They are tied to their owner by blood magic, which means that Dumbledore would have had to have keyed the bag to James prior to him sending it otherwise there would have been no point in sending it. Unless he keyed it to Sirius but it would have been almost impossible to take Sirius's blood without his knowledge while James was within his reach for four years."

Harry wrinkled his nose and reluctantly pulled the bag towards him as he groused, "I suppose I might as well get this over with."

He opened the top of the bag and stuffed his right arm into the bag all the way up to his armpit (to the shock of the non-magicals) and proceeded to fish around inside until his hand closed on an item. He pulled the object out, the non-magicals watching with avid curiosity as the mouth of the bag stretched to allow the object to pass through it, and immediately froze as he found himself looking at the Nerve Gear Helmet. His fellow SAO survivors watched him with knowing regret while Remus and Sirius appeared puzzled by the reaction.

"It still looks just the way it did the day I put it on and entered the live version of SAO," Harry rasped as he finally set it on the table with as much care as someone might take with an unstable bomb. "I would have expected it to… to look different after wearing it for two years; sinister and foreboding instead of innocent and unremarkable."

The rest of the gaming equipment followed piece by piece next, though none of it solicited the same reaction as the Nerve Gear had; even the case for the SAO game only received a fond smile laced with sadness. Kazuto and Ryoutarou both browsed through the larger than expected pile of other games that were brought out, both of them making quiet comments about the games they were familiar with. The small stack of neatly folded clothes (rags) were whisked away by Dobby the moment Harry pulled them from the bag but not before everyone got a glimpse of their threadbare state.

Agil would snag and flip through the completed school workbooks from Harry's years at primary school. He'd then collect the four years worth of school report cards and progress reports that Harry had diligently hidden from the Dursleys so they wouldn't have reason to claim he cheated because he'd gotten some rather high marks back when he had still attended public school regularly; though they weren't as high as they could have been given the fact that the teachers mostly ignored him.

The teen was more than a little shocked when he pulled out a box filled with non-magical photos of a girl with vibrant red hair and familiar green eyes. It was obvious that the pictures had been taken over the course of several years as the oldest photos were of the girl as a baby while the most recent ones were of a young woman in her late teens. In some of the pictures there was an older girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a long neck that Harry recognized as a younger version of his Aunt Petunia while a few had what he imagined would be his grandparents. There were even a few where the redheaded girl was standing with a boy that looked quite a bit like a younger Professor Snape.

"Lily," Sirius breathed as he caught sight of one of the photos with the girl as a teenager in it. "Those are pictures of your mother, Lily. I hadn't thought any photos of either of your parents had survived aside from a few kept by their old friends."

"Where did they come from?" Harry asked as he dumped the box out on the table and spread the pictures out so he could look at more than one photo at a time. "Aunt Petunia told me she burned all of my mother's pictures the one time I dared asked if I could see a picture of her. She then told me my mother was an ugly old hag with a horrible temper and a cruel streak."

"Your mother's sister was a jealous liar," Remus insisted as he helped Harry spread the pictures out on the table. "Your mother was beautiful inside and out; so long as your father wasn't driving her up a wall. She was also stubborn beyond belief and admittedly did have a right nasty temper but only if you pissed her off. Petunia probably lied to you about still having those just to deny you the small joy they would have given you. That, or Lily charmed them to be indestructible at some point and your aunt gave up trying to destroy them and hid them instead."

Harry gave the older wizard a small grin over that information before he reached into the bag yet again and pulled out a diaper bag covered with animated Quaffles and Snitches; the very last item stuffed inside of the bag. He stared at the bag in confusion for several minutes before his attention was drawn to his godfather as Sirius started laughing the moment he saw the bag in Harry's hand.

"James bought that old thing two hours after you were born. Lily was so mad; said no son of hers was going to be raised as an empty-headed Quidditch player. She then told James that if he brought home another Quidditch related baby item she was going to hex his bits off. Two days later, James came home to find that Lily had owl-ordered a stuffed Quidditch set complete with a stuffed broom. Your father teased her mercilessly about it for days."

"I wonder why Aunt Petunia never threw it away or tried to burn it in the fireplace."

"That bag is one hundred percent indestructible," Remus pointed out with a fond laugh. "Your mother was a very intelligent and gifted witch who was well on her way to becoming one of the youngest Charms Mistresses in over two centuries. She covered that bag in so many spells it glowed in the dark for a week straight. It can not be destroyed, can not be lost or stolen, and can not be opened by anyone not tied into the spells. There is nothing your aunt could have done to destroy or discard that bag or anything inside of it."

Harry spent the most of the afternoon alternating between pouring over the pictures of his mother and digging through the diaper bag. Apparently his mother had been a firm believer in preparing for the worst because aside from the normal things one would expect to find a diaper bag (bottles, diapers, clothes, and toys – including the aforementioned stuffed Quidditch set), she'd packed important documents (birth certificates, marriage license/certificate, and immunization records), a few select pieces of jewelry (wedding rings, anniversary gifts, and family heirlooms), several old tomes, money (both wizarding and muggle), a large key ring holding over two dozen keys of varying size, style, age, and material, and a box containing hundreds of wizarding and muggle photographs of his parents, their friends, and him as a baby.

It was a treasure worth far more than all of the wealth he'd found hidden within the Chamber of Secrets.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat  
Ken no Sekai – Sword Art Online

**Game Terminology:**

SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline

* * *

**AN:** _And that's chapter two of my three chappy update planned this weekend. Chapters 15-28 were also replaced with edited versions shortly before I posted this chapter (and this time I have the correct date listed in the AN at the bottom of the chapter unlike the dates on the bottom of the first 14 chapters - and no, I'm not going to go back and reformat all 14 of those chapters yet again just to fix a date that really isn't all that important in the long run).  
_

_Anyway, this chapter had a bit of information (regarding wizarding traditions) and a bit of fluff. And Harry finally learns what happened to the stolen computer and Nerve Gear he'd worn throughout his time in Aincrad. I can already hear some of you demanding to know whether or not Harry will ever enter another VR using the Nerve Gear and the answer to that will be found in later chapters. So, don't bothering asking me because I won't answer. =p_

_That said, the next chapter will have answers to questions that a lot of you have been asking for months. It's taken me forever to work those answers into the story but that was mostly because of the way the story line unfolded. Any questions that are left unanswered at the end of next chapter will be... yep, you guessed it, answered in a later chapter! lol. ~ Jenn_


	41. Enlightenment

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Forty-One: Enlightenment

_Tuesday, June 24, 2025 4:47 PM_

Harry reverently tucked the priceless keepsakes he'd unexpectedly been given into one of the unused Bags of Holding in his Inventory alongside the wand Dumbledore had given to him as Winky turned up and began setting the table for supper. He felt slightly guilty for ignoring everyone for most of the afternoon but he'd never had anything of his parents before and while a number of people had mentioned that he looked like his father with his mother's eyes it just wasn't the same as seeing pictures of them for the first time ever.

Then again, he probably wouldn't have appreciated seeing pictures of them back when he'd thought he'd landed inside of another game world and might have burned any such pictures out of spite (thinking they were fakes).

Now that he wasn't so wrapped up in a piece of his family history, Harry finally recalled what Sirius had said about Dumbledore signing over his guardianship to his godfather and fear gripped the pint sized teen. Would Sirius still allow Agil to file for custody of him in the non-magical world? Would Agil even want to still take him in now that he didn't have to? Would the man be relieved that someone else would bear the burden of taking him in?

"What are you stressing over now, James?" Kazuto inquired as he dropped down beside the suddenly tense Harry and propped his elbow on the younger teen's head while poking him in the side.

Harry shook his head to dislodge the elbow before he bit his lip and glanced at the pile of parchment that his godfather was still going over (a pair of reading glass perched upon the older wizard's nose) before his eyes immediately cut over to where Agil was seated beside Padfoot filling out a stack of forms that Harry hadn't noticed earlier. He then ducked his head and shrugged his shoulders in response to Kazuto's question; not quite certain he knew how to answer it without sounding like a whiny baby.

"None of that now," Kazuto ordered as he poked Harry in the side a second time.

"Sirius is my guardian now and Agil no longer has to file for guardianship of me to keep Dumbledore from locking me up again," Harry muttered dejectedly as he played with the silverware sitting beside the plate Winky had placed in front of him.

"Harry, I'm not going to stop Mr. Mills from claiming guardianship on the non-magical side just because I am now your magical guardian," Sirius stated as he glanced up from the sheaf of parchment he was holding and pinned Harry with his grey eyes over the top of his reading glasses; the man had heard Harry's grumbles thanks to his canine side. "Like I told you during the talk we had back in September; I am not going to push you into anything and if you wish to live with Mr. Mills, then you have my blessing."

"Trying to get rid of me already, gaki?" Agil asked with exasperated amusement.

"No… I just thought you… that you might be relieved to not be burdened with me now that there isn't really a need for you to take me."

"James, you are not a burden; you are a young teen and you deserve to be taken care of and loved just as much as the next teen. I was willing to take you in because I wanted to, not because I had to. I meant what I told you earlier; I've considered you part of my family for years now and all that is left is to make it official. It's far too late for you to wiggle out of it and you already agreed; so you are well and truly stuck with me now."

Harry snickered quietly at the teasing tone Agil's voice had taken when he'd voiced that last sentence and he felt his earlier tension melt away in relief over the knowledge that Agil hadn't changed his mind and that his godfather wasn't mad. He then got a mischievous look in his eyes as he let out a put upon sigh and drawled, "Alright, fine, but I'd better not have to pick up after you for the rest of my life; two years of cleaning up your messes was more than enough."

"I didn't make any messes… I was just a little disorganized and as I recall, you were the one that insisted on picking up around the shop and in our apartment even after I told you that you didn't have to."

Kazuto, Ryoutarou, Asuna, Rika, and Harry all burst out laughing and collapsed against each other because they had all seen what Agil considered a 'little' disorganized. They'd barely been able to walk through Agil's shop because there was so much junk piled all over the place until Harry had cleaned it up. His apartment had been even worse.

"Yeah, yeah; laugh it up you brats."

* * *

Gil was relived to see James remain in high spirits as the meal was served, happily chattering away on any number of subjects and simply basking in the presence of his first and closest friends. He'd been worried about the kid ever since James turned up in the middle of the Granger's living room and promptly descended into an emotional melt down as he poured his heart out for over three hours. The fragile state he'd woken up in that morning (after spending two days virtually unconscious due to magical and emotional exhaustion) had only emphasized how much stress the teen had been under since the end of SAO.

So, seeing the boy bounce back from the brink of what had looked like another breakdown so quickly gave Gil hope that James would eventually be alright.

Once they finished eating, the entire group moved into the drawing room and James settled himself on the floor at Gil's feet while Hedwig half draped herself over his lap to nap as Kazuto turned the conversation turned to magic. Gil listened to the discussion with half an ear as he focused on the pint-sized teen curled up against his legs and lovingly petting the sleeping occamy sprawled across his lap as if it was a harmless puppy or kitten; the older man still half afraid that the kid would vanish into thin air the moment he took his eyes off of him.

"Black-san, I am curious; the other day you mentioned magical affinities and how they are passed down through the blood in addition to listing several different types of magics that existed," Kazuto began absently as he eyes lingered on James as well. "Do you happen to know what magic or magics that James will have gained an affinity for through his parents? And what, if any, stigmas are associated with them?"

"I bet our gaki has an affinity for chaos," Ryoutarou interjected with a laugh that drew a snort from all of the adults as they were well aware of how easily James managed to create havoc wherever he went.

"There is no chaos magic as all magic is chaos," Sirius quipped before he grew serious. "All joking aside, the Potter Family's affinity has been a closely guarded secret for nigh unto twelve generations and speaking of that affinity outside of this house could well see James sentenced to death. If knowledge of the affinity he inherited from his mother were to be made public knowledge he could potentially be thrown into Azkaban for life the moment it even looked like he was practicing certain aspects of that branch of magic."

Sirius paused for a moment before he continued, "And if the wrong people were to learn that he had both affinities, if he did in fact inherit both – since affinities are not always accumulative due to some of them canceling each other out, well let's just say that there are some things worse than imprisonment for life or a quick death and leave it at that."

"Why?" Asuna asked as she frowned lightly.

"The affinities themselves are not bad, if that's what you are thinking," Sirius quickly assured them. "It's more along the lines of the latent potential inherent in those branches of magic and the political stigmas associated with them. They are two of the most feared branches of magic because not much is known about the true extent that those magics are capable of achieving when mastered and what little is known about them has been linked with a handful of the worst wizards."

"If it is so dangerous to spread that knowledge about, may I ask how you came to learn about both affinities?" Gil inquired as he reached down to ruffle James's hair in reassurance after feeling the teen tense up.

"James's paternal grandmother was a Black by birth and my maternal grandfather's youngest sister, so I was fairly close to James from a very young age and we kept no secrets from one another. I was also legally adopted by Granduncle Charlus when I ran away from home after my fifth year at Hogwarts and from that point forward I sat in on all of the lessons that Prongs was given by his father and that included lessons on the family affinity. I didn't learn about Lily's affinity until after I was named James's godfather because it was something that I needed to know in case anything ever happened to them; as someone needed to be able to guide James in learning to harness his magic to its full potential."

"I take it those two branches of magic are some of the ones you didn't bring up the other day?" Kazuto surmised as Asuna curled into his side.

"Correct. If even a whisper of those branches of magic were to become associated with any of those that were present that day it would have had disastrous consequences," Sirius answered as he nervously knuckled his mustache. "As trusted as Pettigrew and Moony were at the time, they were never told about either affinity; which in hindsight was a good thing, considering the fact that Pettigrew turned traitor and sold Prongs, Lily, and James out the first chance he got."

"Maybe I should leave," Remus stated as he climbed to his feet. "Affinities, aside from those that are public knowledge, are a private matter between a wizard and his family."

"I don't mind if you stay, Moony. I trust you," James murmured as he finally relaxed once more against Gil's legs as he glanced up at the man. "I trust everyone here."

"If you're certain…"

James nodded once in affirmation before returning his attention to Hedwig as the occamy had woken up when she'd felt him tense up just a few minutes earlier. More than one person smiled fondly at the teen and his familiar when the occamy started crooning softly as she shifted higher on James's lap, nestled her head in the crook of his neck, and turned one glittering black eye in Ryoutarou's direction as if to remind him that she didn't trust him and let him know that she blamed him for James's previous discomfort.

"Sit down, Moony, you heard the little monster," Sirius ordered with a smirk that didn't quite disguise the disquiet the man felt at the current topic of discussion. The forced playfulness disappeared an instant later as he finally revealed what he'd been dancing about for the last several minutes, "Lily discovered that she had an affinity for blood magic when she was thirteen after she had accidentally sliced her finger open while sharpening her quill with a penknife as she working on her first assignment for Ancient Runes."

"She told me that the moment her blood landed on one of the rune clusters she'd drawn, it had activated the cluster and ruined the entire assignment because everything she'd written up to that point had been forced off of the parchment and onto the floor. Said she had to throw the parchment out after that because the paper continued to repel ink afterwards. The only other people she ever told aside from me were Professor Flitwick as he'd been mentoring her from the moment it was confirmed that she was a Charms prodigy towards the end of her first year and Prongs, once the two of them were married."

"Professor Flitwick was the one that explained her affinity to her and warned her to be careful who she told. He was also the one that supplied her with books on blood magic so she could learn how to use it without a risk of getting caught and without harming herself through carelessness. Dumbledore discovered her ability quite by accident during her seventh year when he walked in on her in the middle of a ritual and he turned a blind eye to her extracurricular activities after warning her to tread carefully and to be a little more careful about when and where she practiced it."

"The problem with blood magic is that it requires blood. Any blood will work, though the blood of a magical creature or being will produce the strongest results; with human blood being considered the most potent. Blood magic is also fueled by sacrifice; both willing and unwilling sacrifice. Willing sacrifices are used for protection, defense, and healing while unwilling sacrifices are for curses, dark rituals, and any act that goes against nature; such as attempting to raise the dead."

"Lily only ever used her own blood or the blood of injured creatures she stumbled upon that she either healed or put out of their misery if they were beyond healing. She also never used any negative blood magic as the idea of forced sacrifices repulsed her as did the idea of seeking to harm another for any reason. The reason that practicing blood magic only carries a life sentence rather than the death penalty is the fact that some forms of blood magic have long been widely accepted within the wizarding world."

"Signing documents in blood to make them magically binding, certain bonding ceremonies require blood (such as an adoption), a couple of beneficial potions that are keyed to a person's magical signature through the blood required, and most security wards require a drop or ten of blood to key an individual into the wards to allow them passage through the wards. It is only when you start using the higher forms of blood magic that people get squeamish and you are likely to find yourself with a permanent room in Azkaban."

"And the stigmas associated with using blood magic, aside from the social and political ones?" Kazuto asked.

"It is a highly addictive branch of magic, even more so than the dark arts, because there is power in the blood. Those who use it also tend to be drawn to freshly spilled blood like a starving vampire and there is a very real risk of you or your sacrifice bleeding to death if you aren't careful. The good news is that those who use blood magic do not run the risk of going insane unless they combine it with dark magic through unwilling sacrifices and murder."

"You said that blood magic only carried a life sentence in prison but that the affinity James potentially gained from his father carried an automatic death sentence. What could possibly be worse than stealing someone's blood and life?" Rika inquired in the silence that had fallen over the room as they digested the information on blood magic.

"The ability to influence a person's soul," Sirius intoned gravely. "All Potters had a strong affinity for soul magic; which is the ability to manipulate the soul of a person or creature. Normally, a witch or wizard with an affinity for soul magic is only ever able to affect their own soul or the souls of small animals such as cats, owls, or dogs but the Potters were able to affect the soul of any creature or being they came into contact with once they were properly trained."

"Once the ability begins to manifest itself, a young Potter will unconsciously influence the souls of those around him and after he has been trained and he has gained sufficient control, the manipulation can be done consciously. It is an ability that helped the Potter Family become highly influential political figures throughout history. But mostly, their affinity to Soul Magic simply allowed them to manipulate magic itself because in a sense the soul is synonymous with magic; the existence of life being a magic all its own."

"How is that possible? I mean, the concept of the soul is rather intangible, isn't it?" Gil asked with a frown while the others were experiencing various degrees of shock and discomfort. James in the mean time had tensed up again and the thirty-six year old suspected that his soon to be adopted son was unsure over whether or not he should be disturbed by the revelation of his affinities.

"Magic makes it possible. Every soul contains a small fragment of magic; that is what makes a soul a soul and gives life to the body the soul is bound to at birth. The thing that separates a wizard from a muggle is the amount of magic present within the soul and the inherited ability of a wizard's soul to draw upon the ambient magic and use it to manipulate his environment. A wizard's strength, or power level, is based upon the amount of magic his soul holds and stronger wizards will find it far easier to control magic than a weaker wizard."

"Furthermore, a wizard is born with a magical core, physically located just behind the heart, which draws in and stores ambient magic. The magical core is directly linked to the soul so that the soul can manipulate the magic that is collected inside of the core which is what allows a wizard to cast spells with the help of a focus, usually a wand. The size of a wizard's core determines a wizard's stamina much like the amount of magic in the wizard's soul determines his strength; the larger the core, the more magic it can collect, and the longer he is able to cast spells before he grows exhausted."

"Those born with an affinity to Soul Magic are also born with the ability to produce their own magic; usually it's just a small trickle that allows them to maintain, heal or harm their own soul or the soul of their familiar. The Potters, by comparison, are able to produce what would amount to a small steady stream of magic that allows them to appear far more powerful than another wizard that has the same size core due to a Potter's soul steadily adding the magic it produces to the core while the core itself continues to draw magic from the air."

"That ability actually saw the Potters mislabeled as war mages in earlier generations; a misconception that they made no effort to correct because it kept anyone from looking too closely into their ability to manipulate and influence the people around them. Now, as terrible as Soul Magic sounds, the Potters were not a family of terrible people. They were well known for their leadership skills, charisma, generosity, open-mindedness, and honesty."

"They were also reckless and bullheaded but you didn't hear that from me. They did not, on general principle, practice the darker aspects of Soul Magic. They spent their time healing and guiding those around them. That didn't stop them from unleashing the full brunt of their anger on those that dared harm their family or friends as they became vengeance personified. I have it on good authority that Hell hath no fury like that of a Potter seeking retribution; which is why I have no trouble believing that James is fully capable of razing Hogwarts to the ground if push came to shove."

"Can you give us a few examples of what soul magic can do? I know you said it can directly affect the soul but to what end? How does that magic influence the person affected by it?" Kazuto prompted as his eyes were once again drawn to James.

"Once the ability has manifested in a wizard, he will be able to sense another soul's intentions on an instinctive level; almost like a sixth sense that constantly warns the wizard of imminent danger. He'll also be drawn to the souls of those people with whom he is compatible; usually trusting them implicitly for no apparent reason. That doesn't mean that mistakes can't be made or that people won't change at some point down the line; it just means that at the time they met that their souls were attuned to each other."

"Additionally, it allows him to get a feel for the affinities of other wizards that he comes into contact with; specifically, it allows him to sense the difference between the souls of those with affinities for benign, positive, and negative magics. It will not, on the other hand, tell him what branch of magic the wizard's affinity falls in; only the category of magic that the wizard uses the most. That ability usually makes the wizard an excellent judge of character. There are obvious exceptions, especially if an individual has a compatible soul; something that doesn't rely upon the person's intentions, though for the most part a damaged or tainted soul is repulsive to those with an undamaged or clean soul."

"There are probably a great deal of other things that can be done with Soul Magic but most of the higher levels of soul manipulation were lost through the centuries due to the Potters being picked off by rising dark wizards that feared their reputation as powerful war mages. I know that they usually find Transfiguration easy since they can use their Soul Magic to influence the object or creature they are transfiguring to make the transition from one form to the next smoother. That is where their control over magic is most obvious."

"And the drawbacks associated with soul magic?" Ryoutarou wondered as he flicked crumpled pieces of paper torn from a blank piece of parchment at Hedwig who batted them back at him with lazy flicks of her feathered tail.

"Mostly unknown but the Potters were notorious for being emotionally unstable or maybe emotionally volatile would be a better way of saying it; either way they were known to be extremely emotional individuals and not in a bad way, unless you got on their bad side. They were also extremely reckless; consummate thrill seekers with an irritating penchant for ignoring their own health and safety. And they were known to be hypersensitive to dark magic and excessive exposure to large amounts of dark magic tended to be highly debilitating; which is one reason why they never practiced the darker aspects of Soul Magic."

"On top of those stigmas, you could say that every single member of the family had a huge target permanently painted on their backs due to the family's collective reputation as war mages and powerful political leaders. Part of that was due to their tendency to thrust themselves into the limelight when they inevitably aligned themselves against the latest rising dark wizard though. Oh, and the stronger a Potter is magically, the more stubborn he is when he sets his mind to something."

"You mean there is a family out there somewhere filled full of people that are just like the gaki!?" Ryoutarou squawked with mock terror. "We're doomed! Doomed I say!"

Anything further Ryoutarou might have said was cut off by the Lip Trap that James automatically shot at him with a practiced flick of his fingers. The amusement that action generated didn't last for very long though as Sirius regrettably answered the man's question, "Sadly, no; James is the only true Potter remaining; Soul Magic is one of the few branches of magic that are gender linked and therefore only passed down through an unbroken line of male descendants. And the family had been steadily growing smaller through the last century or two as a direct result of those targets I mentioned earlier."

Before the atmosphere could grow too depressed over the revelation that James was the last living descendant of a rather remarkable family, Gil cleared his throat and shifted the topic of discussion in a slightly different direction, "At what age does a Potter usually manifest their ability to use soul magic?"

"It depends on the individual," Sirius replied after thinking about the question for a moment. "The ability usually starts to awaken when child's magical core stabilizes around his eleventh birthday and he will occasionally display flashes of insight or unusual perceptiveness in times of danger with the ability fully manifesting by their fifteenth birthday or after they've gone through puberty; which ever comes first. Early training usually helps the child to utilize the ability and allows them to have a greater control over their magic and a greater understanding over the ability."

"You said usually… that implies that there have been exceptions."

"Granduncle Charlus once mentioned that there had been a few rare cases documented within the family archives where a young wizard fully manifested his ability after being placed in life a threatening situation. It is rare for a child to manifest their ability in that way though because few wizarding children are ever placed in such circumstances because magicals, in general, treasure their children as they represent the future. It is considered a taboo in the wizarding world to kill any child under the age of fifteen and purposefully harming a child under the age of eleven is frowned upon because it could permanently damage their magical core, or worse, their soul. That was one of the many reasons that Voldemort terrified so many magicals, he didn't hesitate to attack families where it hurt them the most; their children."

"Do you think you could give us an idea of a situation that would trigger an early manifestation?" Gil inquired with a thoughtful frown as he glanced down at James and considered everything the young wizard had gone through since the day he'd been trapped within the world of Sword Art Online. "And what conditions would have to be met for the manifestation to occur? I just can't see all life threatening situations resulting in an early awakening because if that was the case, then it seems unlikely that so few children experienced an abrupt awakening since children are natural trouble magnets."

"Well you see… it's… er, Remus… help me out here."

"Only you would back yourself into a corner while explaining the concept of forced awakenings because you left out a handful of important facts, Padfoot," Remus chided with fond exasperation before he switched to the lecturing tone that educators everywhere developed after a few years of teaching. "The first thing you need to know is that a wizard's magic is partially sentient; it doesn't think or feel but it is still alive and it instinctively protects itself and its wizard and that is because of the connection that magic has with a person's soul. When a child experiences extreme emotions, his magic reacts accordingly because he has no conscious control over his magic; the burst of magic released at the time is called accidental magic because it is completely uncontrolled and unpredictable."

"When a child's life is in danger, his magic will automatically lash out in response to the child's fear or pain; not in response to the actual danger. An example could be a child falling out of a second story window and growing frightened over the sensation of falling; prompting his magic to cushion his fall so that he bounces instead of crashes or maybe slow him down so he lands lightly on his feet. Accidental magic occurs most often in children under the age of twelve as once they've began to gain true control of their magic, they unconsciously hold their magic back to prevent it from acting on its own."

"Accidental magic is not the same thing as an early or forced awakening of a magical ability but it does play a role in the awakening as it is usually the catalyst for the awakening if the right conditions are met. Those conditions usually revolve around the child's physical health, his mental health, the amount of emotional or mental stress he is under at the time, the size and state of his magical core, and the child's actual ability. It also requires the child to be fully cognizant of what is happening; in other words, he needs to understand the concept of death and know that he is facing certain death; not just reacting to the pain or fear he is feeling."

Remus finished up with, "There has been speculation that those who awaken their abilities under those circumstances tend to be far more powerful than those who awaken them naturally but there is no proof. At the same time there have been many records documenting the instances where those magicals who manifest their abilities prior to age eleven ended up being saddled with some potentially debilitating side effects…"

The prematurely aged wizard trailed off as his eyes widened and he snapped his head sideways to stare intently at James who was only half paying attention to the conversation as he played tug of war with Hedwig over a stripe of Bugbear hide. Sirius in the mean time had also reached the same conclusion as his friend and the man was currently swearing up a storm under his breath.

"Care to share what you just figured out with the rest of us?" Kazuto asked after several minutes of silence had passed.

"When I was going through James's medical records for a second time earlier, the first time being just before the start of his third year, there were a few things that just weren't adding up," Sirius explained as he ran a hand through his hair in agitation. "My critical thinking and reasoning skills were seriously affected by my years in prison due to the damage done to my mind and magic through ten years of exposure to the dementors that guard the prison and it is easy for me to overlook the obvious unless someone comes along to point it out."

"I'd not once considered the possibility of James having gone through a forced manifestation of his Soul Magic despite the fact that the reports had mentioned that his soul had either been moved or forced from his body at the same time as his body was locked into magical stasis. James was pulled from his relatives' house on his eleventh birthday and at the time the scans revealed that his body had been in magical stasis for at least a year and a half. In fact, the target date for the initiation of the stasis was…"

"December twenty-first, twenty-nineteen," Gil finished roughly before he reached down to lift James off the floor after the teen flinched sharply and dislodged Hedwig from her perch on his lap when he'd jerked around to stare up at them with wide eyes; the pint-sized wizard knowing exactly what date the older man had been referring to.

"Actually, it was estimated to be a couple of days before that but how did you know?"

"That was the day I became an Indefinable Immortal Object within Aincrad and everything inside of the game became more real," James replied tightly as he reached over to run his fingers over the scar that wrapped around his left wrist and hand.

"Do you know how and why his soul was forced from his body? And where his soul would have been if it wasn't in his body?" Kazuto prompted when neither adult wizard continued with their deduction.

"No, he was found far too long after the actual event to get a definitive answer to either of those questions. However, the theory is that his soul was forced from his body by a combination of the blood wards that were protecting the Dursley's home and James's own magic in order to save his life. According to Pomfrey's notes, ninety-percent of his magic had been shunted from his core into the machine he had been hooked up to with the remaining ten percent cycling between the machine and James's body. His soul had to have been producing the magic present at the time because while locked in stasis, his body would not have been able to draw upon the ambient magic to recharge the core. They never did find out where his soul had gone after it had been removed from his body; they do know that it was not in the machine with his magic."

"Blood wards…?"

"Lily sacrificed her life to save James the night Voldemort attacked their home. She had done something more than just throw herself in front of Voldemort's spell though, because if that was all it took to protect someone, far more children would have survived against the Killing Curse," Sirius tried to explain, though it was obvious to Gil that the man wasn't one hundred percent certain. "It would have been just like Lily to have used a combination of blood magic and obscure charms to create some kind of protection that would be fueled by her sacrifice and maintained by her blood that lives on in her son."

"Prongs probably helped using Soul Magic because I know he'd ransacked the family library which was stored in the family vault at Gringotts following Charlus and Dorea's deaths after they'd mysteriously come down with a severe case of dragon pox over night. Those wards would have followed James to the Dursley's home and settled into place in order to protect him and because he was living with Lily's sister; they actually should have been stronger because of the blood ties between James and Petunia. They also would have been sentient enough to actively protect James from any harm while inside of them."

"You said he was taken from his relatives' house on his eleventh birthday," Asuna slowly reiterated as she leaned forward. "Are you telling me that he was never moved to the hospital like the other nine-thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine victims? That they secretly cared for his body all that time?"

"No. He was locked inside of the cupboard under the stairs by the blood wards and his own magic while all knowledge of James was wiped from the minds of all three Dursleys long before his soul was transferred out of his body. As far as the Dursleys knew, James had never existed and never lived with them. They didn't even remember that they had a cupboard under the stairs thanks to the magic involved. It even affected the memory of Arabella Figg, who'd been asked to keep an eye on the neighborhood where the Dursleys lived for any suspicious activities that would indicate that Death Eaters had found James and also to watch over James from a distance."

"So basically, you're saying that he was left to die and no one knew where he was or that he even needed help," Gil growled as he wrapped James securely in his arms when the teen began trembling in response to the confirmation that the Dursleys had left him to die (even if it had been unknowingly in a round about way).

"His magic would have sustained his body for as long as it could before the lack of nutrients and a constant state of exhaustion would have forced it to succumb to the inevitable," Remus answered as he glanced down at his hands in shame; the man obviously feeling guilty that he hadn't been able to help the child when he needed it.

"So what, you're saying his magic shoved his soul out of his body to who knows where and froze his body to protect him?" Ryoutarou skeptically asked as the prank preventing him from speaking finally wore off.

"Yes. There were other factors involved; such as the presence of the blood wards and the fact that he was hooked up to a computer despite magic not being compatible with muggle technology," Remus stated with conviction. "The computer should have shorted out or blown up the first time he turned it on but it didn't for some reason. He could have easily met all of the conditions for a forced manifestation which would have allowed his magic to manipulate itself and his soul enough to push his soul from his body to protect him while locking his body down to preserve it from certain death. And his body was dying at the time it was placed into stasis."

"There is proof," Sirius added as he reached out to brush the white locks of James's hair out of his face before trailing his fingers down the twin scars on the teen's face. "He was at an age where his magic was still flexible enough to adapt and it would have been forced to adapt in order to protect and preserve itself and James. Then there is the fact that damage done to a soul is always transferred to the body, though it doesn't always mirror the wounds with such exactness. And now that I think back on it, I know that Soul Magic was involved because each time James added one of us to his Friend List and helped us add him to our Friend List, it did something to us that allowed us to see what he had been seeing all along."

"It also explains why all of the creatures he killed over the past four years shattered in death; he expected them to shatter and therefore his magic reached out to their souls and manipulated their magic to meet his expectations. It is also a potential reason why he hasn't been growing," Remus pointed out logically. "And a possible explanation as to why the multiple Killing Curses he was hit with during and after the third task earlier this month didn't kill him; since the Killing Curse is a bastardized form of Soul Magic designed to rip the soul from the body."

"Hermione said something similar about my lack of growth back at the beginning of last year when she confronted me about SAO and gave me her research notes," James interjected now that he'd had a few minutes to wrap his mind around everything and was no longer on the verge of a panic attack. "And I know exactly where my soul went; Aincrad. My soul was shoved onto the server where my consciousness had been trapped by Kayaba. That's why everything became more real for me; because there was more of me present in the game."

"Okay, say that is true and James's soul was shoved into a computer six years ago by his magic in some bizarre attempt to save his life; what does that mean for James now?" Kazuto inquired with a slight frown.

Before either wizard could formulate an answer to that question, Gil asked several of his own, "Earlier, you stated that the side effects from a forced manifestation could be potentially debilitating for those under the age of eleven. Exactly what kind of side effects are we talking about here? How exactly are those side effects debilitating? Are the side effects permanent? Can the debilitating ones be treated to reduce or control their effects?"

"The types of side effects that one can expect to develop through a forced manifestation vary between affinities," Sirius replied as he ran a weary hand over his face. "In James's case; I would say that the side effects would potentially include the scars he obtained during the time his soul was out of his body, the complete cessation of physical growth, and the way his magic has been corrupted to the point where it does not truly conform to the rules and laws that have governed magic for the past millennium. There could be others as well but it would take further research to determine what they are and how they would affect James and his magic."

"The scars would not be considered debilitating since they don't extend beyond the surface; they could be considered a permanent disfiguration though as there is nothing that magic can do to remove them. Madam Pomfrey attempted to reduce the residual scarring when the injuries first manifested themselves on James's eleven year old body once his soul returned to its proper place but she had little success as they were resistant to all healing magic. His lack of growth could potentially be a serious problem but again, it will take considerable research to determine just how big of a problem that is going to be and whether or not there is a way to resolve the issue."

"As for the changes to his magic; that is something that is a little harder to define. At first glance, most people would think that the way his magic has become twisted is a terrible thing. On the other hand, the way his magic functions allows him to do things our society has long since thought impossible; such a destroy dementors. It also opens up a slue of possibilities for our society since, as a whole, our world has been stagnating because while magic itself is adaptive, it will not change or adapt without being pushed and we've become rather bogged down in our traditions because of the pureblood dogma that has plagued our society for centuries."

"I'm not saying that all of our traditions should be discarded but there are more than a few that could stand to be updated or tossed out all together. One example would be the tripe that paints muggleborn magicals as being inferior to pureblood magicals. The only true advantage a pureblood has over a muggleborn is that they are raised in a magical environment and they therefore learn theory at the knees of their family; which translates into a better understanding of their family affinities and proper training at crucial milestones. At the same time, that advantage stifles their creativity and prevents them from experimenting and expanding upon their family's abilities."

"So does that mean the change to James's magic is a good thing or a bad thing?" Ryoutarou asked in some confusion.

"Well, from a magical standpoint; it's good because change equals growth. Unfortunately, from a political standpoint, it is a very bad thing because it will paint a larger target on James's back because there are a number of individuals out there who will not be pleased with any changes to the status quo because it would be a loss or reduction of political and or economical power for them and their families. After all, no one likes to have the foundations of their world torn out from under them."

"Huh, I wonder if that was what the Sorting Hat meant," James mused as he stirred in Gil's arms.

"What do you mean, James?" Remus inquired curiously.

"The Sorting Hat kept talking about shaking foundations and turning the world on its ears or something like that when it sorted me in my first year."

"Wait, the Hat actually spoke to you?" Sirius repeated with some surprise.

"Yeah, doesn't he speak to everyone he sorts?"

"Er, no; he rarely ever speaks to any of the students. In fact, he told me that he only speaks to an average of about five students per sorting and that he will only speak to those whose minds are conflicted," Sirius answered with a brief shake of his head. "He spoke to me because I was torn between following my family's beliefs and following my heart; or at least that is what he told me. What else did he tell you?"

"He basically said I would terrify the Slytherins, alienate the Hufflepuffs, and lash out at the Ravenclaws. He then said there was only one place he could put me and that was in Gryffindor. The last thing he told me before Professor McGonagall took him from my head was to try not to tear down the school when I started shaking the foundations of the world."

"That… that's scary," Remus blurted out in shock.

"Why is that?" Asuna asked as she glanced between James and the two wizards.

"About a week after James was born, a joint welcome party was thrown for James and Neville by their mothers and several of their mutual friends. I was there to watch over Lily as a favor for Prongs because he had been called into the Ministry to deal with an emergency. One of the topics the ladies discussed was which school House Lily and Alice thought the two of you would be sorted into once you were old enough to attend Hogwarts and which House they wanted you to be in."

"Alice insisted that Neville would be in the House that suited him best and that she would want him to be in the House that brought out the best in him. Lily, on the other hand, told the group that James would be placed in the House that suited him the least in order to protect the school from itself because a low tolerance for inter house politics would have him terrorizing the Slytherins, the excessive friendliness of others would make him an outcast in Hufflepuff, and a constant invasion of privacy from curious housemates would drive him to unleash his temper on the Ravenclaws."

Remus paused for a moment before he shook his head and finished, "The scary part was the fact that the words of the Sorting Hat were roughly similar to those that Lily had uttered that day."

"Actually, they were near identical; the Sorting Hat had also mentioned inter house politics, excessive friendliness, and an invasion of privacy," James corrected as he shifted around so he was sitting sideways on Gil's lap in order to make room for Hedwig to reclaim her perch on the teen's lap.

"Like I said; scary."

"No, more like convenient," Sirius countered with a snort. "Lily probably used a blood ritual she found or created to view James's future shortly after he was born."

The conversation turned to lighter topics at that point and Gil tuned out the others as he silently reviewed the additional information he'd just learned about magic. After a while, his thoughts soon drifted to the teen that was still perched on his lap. The fact that the young man in question had not immediately protested being treated like a child was rather telling of his current emotional state as one of the things that James had hated had been having adults see or treat him as a child – and that had been back when he was a child. Of course, part of that could just be the fact that James had been once again starved for human contact due to his belief that everyone around him had been NPCs for the last four years.

A smile tugged at the corners of Gil's lips as he watched James take his occamy's head in both hands before he leaned down to kiss the creature's beak. Hedwig let out a crooning trill of pure pleasure in response to the obvious affection being showered on her and Gil wished he had a camera on hand to capture the moment. The sappy cooing coming from Asuna and Rika indicated that he wasn't the only one that had been struck by the touching scene while the blush on James's face said he wasn't oblivious to the attention he was receiving.

Chuckling softly, Gil reached out to ruffle James's hair before he pulled the teen in for another hug. The kid let out a small huff but didn't hesitate to snuggle into the embrace. Five minutes later, Gil was once again serving as a pillow for a sleeping James while James himself served as a perch for the sleeping occamy. Bowing his head slightly, Gil closed his eyes and briefly prayed for strength, patience, and guidance; the three things he knew he was going to need to help the young man on his lap find his place in the world.

He then made a mental note to contact his wife in the next couple of days and ask her to make arrangements for James to sit for an academic assessment (the exact date to be set later) so they could find out where his non-magical education sat. After a brief moment of contemplation, he also made a note to get in contact with Kikuoka Seijirou (a member of the Ministry of Internal Affairs – Virtual Division, an investigator in the Sword Art Online Case Victims Rescue Force, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Japanese Self-Defense Force) to make arrangements for James to have a full medical examination and a mental evaluation.

While Gil didn't fully trust the man after his involvement in the Gun Gale Online Incident and Project Alicization, he knew the man was one of the few individuals that could pull strings in order to get James tested before the end of the summer. The problem would be keeping the man from discovering James's magic; unless he was already aware of the Magical World as a member of Ministry of Internal Affairs – Virtual Division. The last thing he wanted was to have his soon to be adopted son exploited because of the gift he'd inherited from his parents.

Maybe he could have Kazuto contact Kikuoka instead; the man still owed Kazuto for the part he played in dragging the nineteen year old into both the Gun Gale Online Incident and Project Alicization.

It was something he could figure out later.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Gaki – brat

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**AN:** _And now you know why Harry got sick from all of the dark magic he was exposed to, why the Killing Curses didn't work on him, and how it was that his magic could alter the magic of other magicals. There is, of course, far more to it than what was explored within this chapter but that will be explained in a later chapter. The exact reason why he isn't aging will also be addressed in the next arc (as soon as I finish expanding it). _

_ANYwho, this is the last chapter for now. I will update my author's page with info for when I will be posting the next chapter once I finish updating my other WIPs w/ edit updates and a couple of chapters. So, it may be a while before I post the next chapter here. ~ Jenn_


	42. Whirlwinds

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

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Chapter Forty-Two: Whirlwinds

_Friday, June 27, 2025 2:30 PM_

Harry was fairly bristling with impatience as he sat between Agil and Kazuto on the bus the group was taking to the Grangers' residence. The past couple of days had been a roller coaster ride of emotions for the teen as he continued to bounce back and forth between extremes. It was frustrating for him to feel so out of control but there had been an overwhelming amount of information to take in on top of his need to fully accept that he'd been wrong all this time about waking up trapped inside of yet another server.

It would have been worse if he hadn't started to at least consider the possibility nearly a year ago; thanks to Hermione.

Hermione…

Just thinking about her brought a smile to his face.

He'd tolerated her at first because she'd not hounded him like the others and she'd not treated him like some sort of bug under a microscope. Even after he no longer needed to be tutored half way through that first year, he'd continued to meet with her and Neville regularly; though at the time he'd not understood why. After a while, he assumed that it had been a familiar routine that gave him some sense of comfort and control in a world where nothing was as it seemed. (Though now he wondered if it might have had something to do with the Soul Magic his godfather had mentioned the other day.)

There had been a shift during second year when he'd learned that Hermione had been prepared to break rules and risk her education (something he'd quickly learned was very important to her during first year) to help him solve the riddle of the Chamber of Secrets simply because she'd heard him muttering under his breath on Halloween night. He'd justified stepping in to help her finish the potion by treating the entire thing like a Quest but the truth was he'd felt compelled to help her just because it had been her. After all, he hadn't felt compelled to help any of the other 'NPCs' that he'd been surrounded by day in and day out (not counting those Events he'd considered Non-Optional Quests – like saving Ginny Weasley); not even his oldest tutor had merited any further consideration once the red head had done his duty.

His third year had been a volatile mess of negativity as he struggled under the weight of his worst memories haunting him day and night thanks to the dementors and the stupid boggart. His torture at the hands of Queen Voldemort hadn't really been all that pleasant either. That had also been the year that Neville and Hermione reasserted their places in his life as they refused to allow him to withdraw from them completely. It was mostly Hermione that had been determined to stick to his side despite his insistence that he'd never see them as friends. And it was her stubbornness that had seen him cave in and allow Hermione and Neville to intrude upon the solitude that he had desired at the time.

It had been the same with Neville, Fred, George, and Luna but at the same time the three boys and younger girl didn't stir the feelings or emotions in Harry that Hermione did (though Luna did confuse him at times). It really wasn't until after Hermione had given him a wake up call at the start of their fourth year that he'd even noticed the way she made him feel. That was also about the time that he'd noticed how sensitive Hermione was to his many moods.

There were times when it seemed like she could tell at a glance if he was feeling down about something and then she'd inevitably go out of her way to cheer him up each and every time. She also seemed to know when he needed time alone and readily gave him the space he needed. Then she'd gone and done the impossible; she'd shattered his perception of the world when she had found his missing friends and family for him.

Harry couldn't thank her enough for what she'd done for him.

She'd given him hope (and inadvertently sent him into despair) at the start of the year and then she'd given him his world back at the end of the year. As far as he was concerned, he owed her big time and he'd give her anything she asked for no matter how much it cost or how difficult it would be to obtain.

The teen's attention was brought back to the present the moment he felt their bus slow down and pull over to the side and Harry felt his insides squirm again as he realized that this was their stop. He bounded off the bus in record time and then stopped in the middle of the side walk before spinning back and forth as he had no clue which way he needed to go to find his Hermione. He'd somehow expected some sort of otherworldly force to direct him to his friend's house because he was so drawn to everything about her.

The only reason he didn't bother to use his Menu to find her was because he'd been told that it was against the law to do magic in front of non-magicals that weren't already aware of magic and his Player Menu apparently counted as magic – something he'd not known until his godfather had pointed it out to him last night. Of course, his previous belief that magic didn't exist would have made it hard to see the Menu as actual magic. Even now that he knew magic did exist, it was still difficult for him to wrap his mind around the idea that magic was _real_.

"Your girlfriend's house is this way, gaki," Ryoutarou declared with a laugh as the adults with him began walking off to the left.

Harry grinned and happily bounded after the others, ignoring the way they were all openly laughing at his behavior, and fell into step beside the taller man. After a few minutes, Harry addressed the man that was something of an older (and somewhat annoying) brother, "Oi, Tarou-baka, I know you can't help yourself and usually I don't mind your teasing… but you do know that if you tease Hermione and make her cry; I'm going to hurt you, ne?"

"Why must you call me that?" Ryoutarou whined, the man disliked his name being shortened and he especially disliked the first half of his name being dropped; something Harry had been quick to capitalize on the moment he'd discovered how much it irked the man.

"Your name is too long and you just aren't cool enough to be called dragon," Harry quipped with a smirk before darting back out of reach of the man's hands as he attempted to grab hold of Harry in order to give him a noogie or tickle him in retaliation. "But I am serious…"

"Er, no, that would be me," Sirius interjected to a chorus of groans; the man played that joke far too often for it to be funny any more.

"No, you're just annoying, old man," Harry growled as he stuck his tongue out at his godfather. "Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted; I meant what I said, Tarou. If you make my Hermione cry, I will never forgive you. She's special. She's the one that found you for me and she didn't have to. I owe her so much; not only for finding the five of you but for not writing me off as a raving lunatic back when I was being a real berk to everyone. So, no taunting or teasing her allowed; enough people already do that to her at school and I won't hesitate to prank you just like I prank the annoying students at school."

"Alright, alright, I get it, gaki; no teasing your girlfriend."

Harry hummed and nodded once; his warning properly delivered. He never saw the amused smirks and smiles on the faces of the other adults (over his lack of denial that Hermione was his girlfriend or the fact that he had claimed her as his) as he turned his eyes forward to search the street for any sign of the Granger's house (not that he knew what it looked like on the outside). The poor teen was completely unaware of the fact that they all thought he was smitten with the young witch despite the fact that his body still hadn't entered puberty.

In fact, the group had already begun placing bets on when Harry would get up the courage to ask her out on their second date (the Yule Ball considered by them to count as the first) or if Hermione would be the one to ask first, when they'd share their first kiss, when they'd officially become a couple, and which order those three events would occur in; not that Harry was aware of that.

Ten minutes later, the group was walking up the front walk to Hermione's home and Harry was alternating between elation and trepidation; he'd been a bit rude the last time he'd been there, after all. That didn't stop him from being the first one to reach the door or from reaching up to ring the door bell without bothering to wait for the others to join him. As soon as he'd heard the chime-like tones of the door ring out, Harry began bouncing on the balls of his feet while he wanted for someone to answer the door. He didn't settle down until he heard the lock being clicked open, though the smile on his face hadn't grown any smaller.

He was a bit disappointed when the door was answered by an older woman but he quickly hid his disappointment as he greeted the woman with a short bow, "Good afternoon, ma'am; is Hermione home?"

"Hello again, young man, ladies, and gentlemen," the woman greeted warmly in return as she opened the door wider and stepped backwards after nodding to the adults standing behind the diminutive teen. "Won't you come in and make yourselves comfortable while I inform my daughter that she has guests?"

"Thank you, Mrs. Granger," Harry replied as he slipped into the house on the heels of her invitation and automatically began looking around for Hermione as the woman (who had just confirmed that she was Hermione's mother) led them to the living room.

While the others seated themselves around the room, Harry nervously stayed on his feet and let his eyes follow Mrs. Granger as she left the room to fetch her daughter. He then glanced about the room he was in and soon recognized it as the room he'd teleported into a week ago. Seconds later, he started shifting from foot to foot as time seemed to drag by endlessly; the teen impatient to see his friend so he could thank her properly. The moment he picked up the sound of fast moving footsteps approaching, he froze and swung around to face the direction in which Mrs. Granger had disappeared.

Later, the others would swear that Harry had used Sprint to cross the room the moment that Hermione had entered; one second he'd been standing near the couches and the next he was on the other side of the room hugging his friend as he murmured, "Thank you," over and over again while the adults watched on with fond amusement.

"I think she gets the point, gaki," Ryoutarou called out several minutes later when Harry showed no signs of stopping or releasing his friend.

Harry blushed bright red and immediately sprang away from Hermione as he avoided glancing in the direction of the now laughing adults. Hermione's soft giggle had him glancing sideways at her and he felt his heat up further when he noticed her brown eyes dancing with pure amusement while she covered her mouth with her hands.

"You're welcome, James," Hermione offered once she got her laughter under control. "I'm sure you'd have found them yourself if you'd had the chance to look."

"Maybe but I really wouldn't have known where to start looking. Doesn't really matter now though because you already found them for me and you didn't have to," Harry stated as he impulsively hugged her again. "I owe you a dozen favors for sticking by me and for finding my family and friends. You didn't have to and you did it anyway; even though I was a right prat for so long."

"No, Malfoy was a right prat because he always teased me and called me cruel names. You never called me names, you put up with my ranting tirades, and you listened to me lecture on about magical theory for hours on end during our study sessions and you didn't have to. You could have asked Professor McGonagall for another tutor or just stopped studying with me once you'd caught up with everyone else but you didn't. And I just couldn't stand by and do nothing."

"And you never could resist solving any mystery you stumbled upon," Mrs. Granger interjected knowingly as she carried in a tray holding several glasses of ice, a pitcher of lemonade, and a plate of biscuits.

"Mum!"

"It's true, dear, and you know it."

"You are very good at solving mysteries," Harry pointed out with a grin. "Best researcher in all of MaM."

"What in the world is mam?" Kazuto inquired as he accepted the glass of lemonade that Mrs. Granger had poured for him.

"The world of Magic and Madness," Hermione loftily declared before she broke down into giggles; the fifteen year old witch still very much amused by the alternate name James had come up with to describe the world he'd woken up in four years earlier. "It's what James calls Hogwarts and the magical world."

"That's because I always seemed to be surrounded by weirdos, not counting you, Luna, and Neville of course, but you can't deny that Fred and George are weird. Who in their right mind _wants_ to experiment with troll snot? And you don't even want to know what else they've asked me to collect for them; all in the name of research."

"That's your own fault for bragging about the things that you've picked up out in the forest," Hermione retorted with a shake of her head as she dragged Harry over to the unoccupied armchair and sat him down next to her; the adults hiding amused smiles over the blatant, if silent, declaration of the girl's feelings for her oblivious friend (for while they both fit on the chair, they were squished very close together). "Anyway, what are you going to do for the rest of the summer now that you don't have to stay at Hogwarts?"

"Otousan applied for custodial guardianship with the Crown two days ago," Harry quietly answered as he suddenly grew nervous. "Once the application has been approved, we'll be heading to Japan until I have to be back here to testify at the trials of the three Death Eaters that I caught the night of the Final Task. Sirius already contacted Madam Bones about the trial dates and they're all set for late August in order to give them time to contact all of the witnesses and collect as much evidence as they can."

"Oh… are you… will you still attend Hogwarts or will you go to the magical school in Japan?"

"I'll probably still go to Hogwarts but it really depends on Dumbledore; I refuse to be locked up again. Sirius thinks he'll leave me alone now though. In the mean time, otousan wants to take me home with him so I can meet his wife, Mayumi. I'll have to take a bunch of tests too because otousan wants me to finish my non-magical education; which won't be easy because I haven't been to regular school in almost six years. Plus he wants me to get a proper medical exam since I don't have any records in the non-magical world."

"Doesn't it usually take a long time for guardianship applications to be processed?" Mrs. Granger inquired curiously.

"Normally, yes, but because there is a magical child involved, the application will be pushed through rather quickly in order to avoid the stress of a long drawn out case from putting undue pressure on the child which could potentially lead to complications if the child were to display accidental magic inside of a courtroom or in front of a muggle case worker. Not that that would be much of an issue given James's current age," Remus explained. "However, the moment James's name was recognized by a squib working for the welfare department, his case was flagged in the system; a muggleborn caseworker attached to the DMLE within the Ministry was then assigned to the case in order to move things along and create any necessary paper trails to avoid having to answer awkward questions about James's lack of public records."

"We were told we should have an answer by mid-July," Agil added. "The gentleman interviewed both James and I on the spot and confirmed that his magical guardian, who is as of five days ago James's godfather, did not contest the claim. He actually approved the application right then and there but it takes a few days for the change to be documented by both the Crown and the Ministry. The fact that I intend to take James out of the country is the main reason for the delay as he will need both a passport and a visa; both of which will take time since the visa needs to be approved by both sides of the Japanese government before I can take him into the country."

"How will that work if you intend to allow James to attend Hogwarts during the year?"

"Fairly easily actually as I will return to England with him at the end of the summer this year so I will be close enough in the event that he needs me for any reason. I have already contacted my wife and she readily agreed to the arrangement since we'll return to Japan at the end of the coming school year. Once he turns sixteen, he'll be old enough to travel back and forth on his own and my wife and I would come to England to visit him during the winter and spring holidays or if an emergency arises while he is in school. It helps that he only has three years of magical school left."

"Otousan said I could invite you and the others to come visit me during the summers too," Harry interjected as he glanced sideways at Hermione. "Not this summer, because he said we'll be too busy, but next summer for sure."

"I'd like that," Hermione quickly confessed as a light blush swept across her cheeks. "What are you going to do for the rest of this summer while you wait for your visa to be approved?"

"Sirius is going to take us to Diagon Alley in a couple of days and Kazuto wanted to see some of the local sites but I don't know what there is to see because my relatives never took me anywhere. I thought maybe… since you probably know what the best places to visit would be; you could maybe come along and do some sightseeing with us? If you wanted to, that is, and if your parents said it was alright."

"Mum, may I? Please?"

"It's fine with me, dear; so long as your father gives you his permission. What kind of places are you looking to visit? So we know about how much money my daughter will need to pay for her portion of any entrance fees and food if we allow her to go with you."

"I'm paying for everything," Harry was quick to inform the woman.

"But you're just a child…"

"He's also a very stubborn child," Ryoutarou pointed out with exasperation. "He argued for twelve hours straight on why he should be allowed to pay for our sightseeing trips and we eventually agreed just to get him to shut up."

"I'll actually be paying for our meals and transportation," Sirius added as he brushed off the glaring pout Harry sent his way the moment he'd made his announcement; the teen wasn't the only one with a stubborn streak. "We only agreed to allow James to pay for our entrance fees to the various places we visit and everyone will, of course, be purchasing their own souvenirs."

"I would be willing to supply a reasonable sum to cover any souvenirs that Hermione might wish to purchase," Agil offered as he too ignored Harry's pouting glare when it transferred to him. "It is the least I can do after the rather large part she played in reuniting us with James. Though, to tell you the truth, I don't believe there is any real way to pay her back for what she has done. James has been like a son to me for close to six years now and I'd been at the point where I'd begun to lose hope that I would ever find him when her letter arrived."

"Oh, we couldn't let you pay for all of her souvenirs," Mrs. Granger protested automatically. "However, I will not stop you from matching what my husband and I give her to spend as I can understand your desire to repay my daughter for her well meaning meddling on behalf of her friend. I also believe that your intentions are honorable which helps ease any discomfort I might have otherwise felt about an offer such as yours."

The adults would spend the rest of the afternoon talking and making plans while Hermione gave Harry a tour of her house before the two teens sat down to work on their summer assignments so they wouldn't have to worry about doing them later. Once her father arrived home, Hermione immediately pounced on him to request (all but demand) permission to accept the invitation for her to join Harry and his family during their sightseeing. The moment that permission was given, their itinerary was quickly solidified; both teens giddy with the knowledge that they'd get to spend the next couple of weeks hanging out together outside of Hogwarts before Harry left for Japan.

The next twenty days passed by in a whirlwind of activities as the group visited various museums, amusement parks, and famous landmarks. Both adult Grangers often joined them on the weekends or in the evenings over supper so that they could spend time with their daughter and get to know Harry (all of the adults readily believed that he'd one day be dating their daughter; even if the two children hadn't yet acknowledged it). Harry loved every single minute of each outing, though he was irked that his lack of height meant that he couldn't go on a number of the more impressive rides when they visited the amusement parks. At least he got to have Hermione all to himself while the others rode the roller coasters since she didn't really care for the fast rides or heights.

Harry's evenings, on the other hand, were filled with meditation and mental exercises to help him better control his Soul Magic. He also went through the books that had been left in his diaper bag (which turned out to be his mother's books on Blood Magic and the tomes on Soul Magic that his father had taken from the Potter Vault). Sirius guided him through both the exercises and the reading to make certain he didn't harm himself accidentally while Agil and the others watched or studied magical theory with the help of Remus after the five non-magicals had voiced their desire to better understand Harry's world.

When they received word on the eighteenth of July that their paperwork had been processed and that Harry's passport and visa were ready, Harry almost wished it would have taken longer. On the other hand, he was excited about going to Japan; even if he was a bit nervous about meeting Agil's wife (who was also his new adopted mother) and the tests he would soon be taking (both medical and academic).

Harry would get to spend one last afternoon hanging out with Hermione in Diagon Alley where he treated her to an ice cream at Fortescue's and bought her the purebred kneazle kitten she'd fallen in love with while he was purchasing owl treats (for Gaki), rolled oat, bran, and molasses bars (for Mendoukusei), and rats (for Hedwig) at the Magical Menagerie. Luckily, Hermione had already had permission from her parents to pick out a pet, so Harry didn't get himself in trouble with them over the purchase of the kitten.

Surprisingly, Hedwig didn't seem to mind the kitten as much as Harry had feared she would; but then again, the occamy was smart enough to sense that the kitten had no plans of stealing Harry's affections. It probably helped that he'd had a fresh supply of rats on him at the time.

The twenty-first saw Harry bidding goodbye to his godfather, Remus, and the Grangers as he boarded the plane to Japan with Agil and the others. It had been hard for him to say goodbye but the knowledge that he'd see the others again in less than two months did make it a little easier. Harry was actually looking forward to riding the Hogwarts Express for the first time; an experience he'd been denied for the previous four years. That was mostly because it was an experience that he could share with Hermione though.

All through the twelve hour flight, Harry was bouncing back and forth between excitement and nervousness. He was excited because he'd never flown on a plane before and found the view from the window seat amazing as he was far higher up than he'd ever gone on his broom and because he was no longer locked up inside of Hogwarts. He was nervous though because he'd soon be meeting his adopted mother as well as Kazuto's sister, Rika's boyfriend, and a couple of Ryoutarou's friends (men he'd actually met in SAO as they'd been part of Ryoutarou's guild in addition to being the tall man's real life friends).

After their plane had landed, it seemed like time had been sped up as they were quickly processed through customs, rushed through the baggage claim, and piled into a pair of taxis that would take them to the Dicey Café (Agil's restaurant and pub) where they were meeting the others. Harry's eyes were glued out the window as he took in the passing scenery, fascinated by the bustling city that was Tokyo. Rika, who was riding with Agil and Harry, happily pointed out various landmarks or important buildings as they passed them with Agil occasionally passing along an anecdote or two.

All too soon they were pulling up in front of a small side street and stepping out of the taxis and the teen spun around to take in everything. Five minutes later, Agil was leading them down into the side street through the crowd towards a small building with worn wooden paneling and a worn red door. The diminutive wizard snickered in amusement when he saw the boxes and crates piled up in front of the building and Agil playfully slapped him on the back of the head; the older man knew exactly why Harry had started laughing.

The group poured into the small café through the door just seconds after that and Harry's earlier nervousness returned as he took in the number of people that were crowded into the small building. Feeling more than a little self conscious, Harry half hid himself behind Agil as the others immediately hurried off to greet their friends and family. His biggest fear in that moment was that Agil's wife wouldn't like him and that she'd demand he be sent away.

Harry needn't have worried; Mayumi greeted him with a warm hug the moment Agil introduced him to her and kindly welcomed him to the family before she held him at arms length to get a good look at him. Harry took the time to study his new foster mother in turn; she was only about fifteen inches taller than Harry, had long black hair that was currently secured in a loose bun at the back of her neck, lightly tanned skin that let him know she enjoyed spending time outdoors, and intelligent dark gray eyes that sparkled with happiness and warmth. She was wearing a purple kimono with white cranes and pale purple clouds tied with a pale blue sash above her waist. Overall, Harry thought she looked rather pretty.

Being introduced to everyone else was a bit overwhelming; most of them more than a little shocked when they learned he was nearly fifteen (his rather short height making him look half his age) and more than a few of them couldn't stop staring at the scars on his face (mainly those that had not been in trapped inside of SAO with them). He had been quite relieved when the party ended and everyone had gone home; leaving Harry alone with his new parents. Mayumi had then given Harry a small tour of the café while Agil cleaned up before they locked up and headed home (the café had been closed to the public all day in anticipation of their arrival).

Harry was then given a tour of what would be his new home before being shown to his room. Mayumi had been a bit nervous over Harry's reaction to the room; his adopted mother unsure of how Harry would feel over her choosing to go with a dragon theme when redecorating the room. Harry loved it the moment he saw it and he especially loved that the dragons painted onto the walls were rather realistic looking instead of childish. He'd also been suitably impressed when he learned that Mayumi had drawn and painted the dragons herself.

The fact that the room, while a little on the small side, was not cluttered with furniture was a plus too as it allowed Harry plenty of room to move about (overly small or highly cluttered rooms tending to send him into a mild panic attack as he'd developed claustrophobia not long after he'd first started playing the beta version of SAO – something he'd had to hide from his relatives between the end of the beta test and the start of the live game).

There was a small moment of tension when Harry brought Hedwig out (the occamy had not been pleased to be required to travel in a carrier under a spell that made her appear like a dog and she'd made her displeasure known) but thankfully it was smoothed over rather quickly. Mayumi had been very curious about the occamy if a little leery of the rather large and obviously reptilian bird; given that she had sharp talons and an equally sharp beak. Harry was quick to reassure his foster mother that Hedwig was well behaved and had never actually hurt anyone; though he did admit that she tended to purposefully frighten those that annoyed him.

The next two days would then be spent settling in as Harry added a few personal touches to his bedroom (displaying some of the photographs he had from the last year and of his birth parents as well as setting out some of the items he'd collected over the last six years – such as the unique Hearts of the various monsters he'd defeated). He also spent quite a bit time during those two days tentatively getting to know Mayumi and listening to the stories she shared with him about when she first met Agil (much to the man's embarrassment).

Harry would then spend the morning of the twenty-fourth revising for his pending assessment tests while he waited for Kazuto to pick him up for an appointment with Kikuoka Seijirou.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Baka – idiot  
Gaki – brat  
Otousan/tousan – father

* * *

**AN:** _I know this chapter seems a little rushed but I really didn't want to get stuck writing about each and every touristy thing the group did while they were still in England. I had hoped to expand on Harry's arrival in Japan and write out the party scene but the few attempts I made at it turned out so flat and introduced far too many OCs. I also trimmed off close to 3,000 words of this chapter that were expanded upon (namely the meeting w/ Kikuoka and the results of Harry's non-magical medical assessment). So, instead of just two chapters to cover the summer, there are now pretty much five-ish chapters (including this chapter) with the fifth chapter rolling right into the fifth year arc.  
_

_Anyway, this chapter and the chapter I tossed up for Stubborn Shadow will be the last chapters I am posting for the year so that I can concentrate on wrapping up a few of the partial chapters I have written for various WIPs. I will resume posting after the first of the year, though I don't have an exact date as of yet. I have plans to have something ready by the middle of January at the latest though, providing I don't have any problems. _

_On that note, I'd like to thank everyone for the reviews, favorites, alerts, and community adds. HAPPY HOLIDAYS ~ Jenn_


	43. Interrogation

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Forty-Three: Interrogation

_Thursday, July 24, 2025 11:49 AM_

Harry whooped with glee as he clung to Kazuto's waist from his seat on the back of the older teen's motorcycle while said teen expertly wove in and out of traffic at breakneck speeds. It wasn't quite as thrilling as flying on his broom or facing a dragon but there was a certain thrill in watching the steady stream of lights and colors rushing passed as they zipped passed the cars and trucks that shared the road or raced alongside the bullet trains. There was just something freeing in defying gravity, speed limits, and death; even if he wasn't the one in control at the moment.

All too soon, Kazuto was slowing down to pull into multi-story parking garage and Harry let out a soft sigh of regret in response to the ride ending so soon. It only took a couple of minutes for Kazuto to pay the parking fee and find an empty parking space and Harry reluctantly slid off the back of the motorbike before he pulled the helmet from his head. He then passed the helmet to Kazuto and ran his hands through his hair to straighten it up a bit while he waited for the nineteen year old to lock up his bike.

"_Ready, James?_" Kazuto inquired as he reached out to ruffle Harry's hair.

"_I guess,_" Harry replied as he ducked away from the older teen's attempts to mess his hair back up. "_It's not like I even know what it is I'm supposed to be ready for; you never told me why I had to meet with this Kikuoka guy. I mean, I don't even know who he is and all otousan would tell me about him was that I should be careful what I tell him and to not let him rope me into promising anything I might later regret._"

"_Gil isn't all that fond of Kikuoka-san; which is why he didn't come with us and probably why he didn't tell you much about him. I don't really like him all that much either, for that matter. He's not a bad person per se but he is more than a little annoying and can be rather callous at times. He will also go to great lengths to get what he wants. As for why I'm taking you to meet him; it's simple, he wants to ask you a few questions._"

"_Questions…?_" Harry repeated as the two of them exited the garage and headed north. "_What kind of questions?_"

"_He wants to ask you questions about your time in Aincrad._"

"_Why…?_"

"_Kikuoka-san is a member of the Second Separated Advanced Network Division's Technology Bureau within the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (or the Virtual World Division) and up until the case was closed, he was one of the lead investigators for the SAO Case Victims Rescue Force,_" Kazuto answered as the two of them reached an intersection. "_And even though the SAO Case is considered to be closed, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about what happened during the two years that we were all trapped inside of the game. A number of those questions revolve around you because there were no records of you to be found once the game ended; as far as the investigators were concerned, you didn't exist._"

Harry shivered in response to Kazuto's last statement; it struck far too close to home. There had been countless times when he'd questioned his own existence over the past six years and to this day he still had trouble accepting the real world as his reality at times. (Something that really wasn't all that surprising when one considers that it had been less than three months since he'd received solid proof – in the form of his friends – that he was no longer stuck on a server.)

"_There was never any doubt in our mind that you existed though,_" Kazuto assured Harry as he grabbed the shorter teen in a headlock and dragged him across the street. "_You are far too ornery to be a figment of our imagination and we never would have stopped searching for you even if your friend hadn't contacted me._"

Harry let out a yelp of surprise in response to being grabbed before he started laughing in response to Kazuto's claim while he tried to twist himself free of the headlock. The older boy would eventually release him once they'd reached the other side of the street and Harry spent a couple of minutes straightening up his clothes and hair as Kazuto led him into the lobby of a rather fancy (read stuffy and overly pretentious) building. After checking in with the receptionist, they took the lift up to the posh restaurant on the fifteenth floor. As soon as they stepped out of the elevator, they were greeted by a maître d' dressed in a black tuxedo and directed to a semi-secluded table by the windows in the far corner of the restaurant.

Seated at the table, was a man with messy black hair, dark eyes, and a clean shaven face. He was wearing a green business suit, a white dress shirt, a navy blue tie, and glasses with hexagonal frames. On the table beside him, was a black and silver briefcase in addition to an empty water glass, a half cup of coffee, and a recently cleared plate (the latter three items a clear indication that the man had recently eaten and that he'd been there for a while).

As they approached the table, the man turned from the window and glanced in their direction. Harry thought he saw the man's eyes widen in shock for a brief moment before the light glinting off of his glasses made it all but impossible to see his eyes. The slight frown that pulled the corners of his mouth down and furrowed his brow said he was either annoyed or upset though. By the time they had reached the table, the man had risen to his feet to greet them.

"_Konnichiwa_, _Kazuto; it's good to see you again,_" the man stated as he briefly dipped his torso in a polite bow.

"_Konnichiwa_, _Kikuoka-san,_" Kazuto replied a bit stiffly. "_Kikuoka-san, allow me to introduce you to…_"

"Harry Potter; Britain's infamous Boy-Who-Lived," Mr. Kikuoka interjected rather rudely in lightly accented English. "Young Harry here… (May I call you, Harry?) …needs no introduction; his reputation precedes him. As does the rumors of his exploits over the past four years; most notably those from this past year. I am Seijirou Kikuoka and I am most surprised to find you here in Japan when last I heard, Dumbledore-san had you sequestered at Hogwarts."

"_No, you may not call me Harry,_" Harry countered in Japanese as he scowled at the man to hide his nervousness over being recognized by him since that meant that there was a rather high possibility that the man was wizard. He wasn't exactly pleased with the man's blunt reminder of the time he'd spent locked up as a prisoner at Hogwarts either. "_I never use my first name and do not like it when anyone else addresses me as such._"

"_Oh…? Now that is a pleasant surprise; you speak Japanese fairly well for one of the hide-bound British Community's 'gifted'. I had not expected you to feel quite so comfortable or confident speaking Japanese once I realized exactly who you are. Actually, I had not expected to meet you at all, Potter-kun. I was under the impression that Kazuto was bringing the mysterious player named 'James' that those of us investigating the SAO Incident dubbed 'Ghost-Boy' because there were no records of him to be found._"

"_If you had not cut me off earlier, you would know that this is James,_" Kazuto drawled as he steered Harry towards the chair furthest away from Kikuoka before he commandeered the chair directly across from the chair that Mr. Kikuoka had been using. An angry scowl then formed on the older teen's face as he leaned forward to demand, "_What I'd really like to know is why you immediately recognized James the moment we entered the room when you claimed not to have any idea who he was when Gil and I gave you those sketches we had drawn up of James four years ago. Were you lying to us these past four years about knowing where to find James?_"

"_No, I was not lying,_" Mr. Kikuoka retorted as an annoyed look briefly passed over his face in response to the accusation in Kazuto's question. "_As famous as young Potter-kun here is throughout the 'gifted' communities around the world, few outside of Britain actually knew what he looked like beyond the fact that he had black hair, green eyes, and a lightning bolt scar until his photo was released by the media for the first time last November. Do you have any idea just how many little boys there are out there that have black hair and green eyes? And all of the sketches you provided me lacked his facial scars and the white patches in his hair._"

"_On top of that, there is the fact that the 'gift' that Potter-kun was born with should have made it impossible for him to use a computer let alone the Nerve Gear that was required to play SAO at the time of its release. Even if he had not been one of the 'gifted', his age alone should have prevented him from being able to use the Nerve Gear because of the age restrictions placed upon the NERDLES technology. Additionally, the government officials associated with Japan's 'gifted' community assured us that none of the 'gifted' had been caught up in the Death Game._"

"_And lastly, Potter-kun was born and raised in England; so there was no reason for me to suspect that he could have gotten his hands on a copy of the SAO software when the software was not released outside of Japan,_" Mr. Kikuoka finished as he finally retook his seat and signaled for a waiter. "_Before we delve any deeper into improbabilities and facts, however; the two of you should take the time to order yourselves something to eat, my treat._"

Harry pursed his lips for a moment as he eyed the menu that Kikuoka held out towards him before he looked beyond the menu to meet the man's gaze. He couldn't help but be wary of the man due to what little bit he'd learned about him from Kazuto and the fact that he had recognized Harry. There was also a part of Harry that was more than a little weirded out by the fact that his so-called fame was a little more widespread than he had originally believed it was. He had kind of hoped that his celebrity status had been limited to Great Britain.

After a few seconds had passed, Harry accepted the menu since he couldn't see any reason not to accept it. He opened the menu a moment later with the intent to peruse the offered dishes only to freeze when he noted the prices. His eyes then flicked up towards Mr. Kikuoka before he glanced sideways at Kazuto as he listened to the older teen order several dishes off of the menu without any hesitation. A frown formed on his face as his eyes returned to the menu to note that the dishes that Kazuto had ordered were not exactly cheap.

"_James, have you decided what you want?_" Kazuto asked a moment later when Harry didn't automatically speak up after Kazuto had finished giving his order to the waiter.

Harry hesitated for a moment before he nodded and ordered, "_I'll have the chirashizushi and a pot of green tea._"

"_No dessert?_" Mr. Kikuoka inquired curiously as the waiter wrote down Harry's order before he withdrew to pass their orders to the chef.

"_I haven't had lunch yet._"

Mr. Kikuoka hummed an acknowledgement before he leaned forward to prop his elbows on the table and asked, "_Did either of you have any other questions for me before I start on the long list of questions I have for Potter-kun here?_"

"_Aa, I have one,_" Kazuto replied as he draped one arm over the back of his chair; the nineteen year old a perfect picture of insolence and Harry nearly snorted because the pose was just so 'Kirito'. "_Are you one of the so-called 'gifted'?_"

"_Chigau, I was not born with the 'gift'._"

"_If you are not like me, then how is it that you know who I am?_" Harry asked as he recalled what the man had said earlier about his reputation and rumors.

"_As a Lieutenant Colonel in Japan's Self-Defense Force, I was briefed on the existence of the 'gifted' community shortly after I was promoted. Once I was aware of those like you, I did a considerable amount of research on the various communities scattered throughout the world in order to familiarize myself with those individuals that were potential threats to Japan and her people. Britain's most recent dark lord and his followers are just a few of the individuals that I researched extensively. Naturally, your name turned up multiple times during my research._"

"_Oh._"

"_Was there anything else you wished to ask?_" Mr. Kikuoka prompted as he flipped the lid of the briefcase on the table open and pulled out a slim recording device that looked something like the remote control for a television that he placed on the table between Harry and Kazuto. "_No? Then let us get down to business, gentlemen. For the record, could you please state your full name?_"

"_Potter… Harry James,_" Harry grudgingly replied, though he had hesitated on acknowledging his first name; something he was not used to doing since it had been around six years since he'd willingly answered to that name.

"_Date of birth?_"

"_July thirty-first, two-thousand-ten._"

"_Place of birth?_"

"_London, England._"

"_What is your father's full name?_"

"_Why? Don't you already know who both of my parents were?_"

"_Technically, yes, I'm already fully aware of who your parents were; however, because this is an official interview, I need to confirm that the information I have is accurate and I'm also required to ask you the same questions that your fellow survivors were asked during their interviews in order for consistency's sake. So, please state your father's full name for the record._"

Harry frowned at the man before he replied, "_Potter James Charlus._"

"_And your Mother's full name?_"

"_Potter Lily Anne._"

"_Do you know your mother's maiden name?_"

"_Evans._"

"_Do you live with one or both of your parents?_"

"_No,_" Harry replied in a lightly clipped tone in his effort not to get annoyed at the current line of questioning.

"_For the record, could you please tell me why you do not live with your parents?_"

"_They're dead._"

"_What was the date of their death?_"

"_October thirty-first, two-thousand-eleven._"

"_Who is your current guardian?_"

"_I was officially adopted by Mills Andrew Gilbert and his wife, Mayumi, on July nineteenth of this year but they share guardianship of me with Sirius Black, my godfather._"

"_Who are you currently living with?_"

"_My adopted parents._"

"_What is address of your current residence?_"

"_Ano… I don't know the address yet._"

"_Kazuto, do you have the Mills' address?_" Mr. Kikuoka inquired as he frowned at Harry for a brief moment before he shifted his gaze to Kazuto.

"_They live in Ueno, Tokyo but I couldn't tell you the street address as I've never visited their home._"

"_Do either of you know how long the Mills have resided at their current residence?_"

"_No,_" Kazuto answered while Harry merely shook his head no when Mr. Kikuoka glanced in his direction.

"_Very well, I will come back to that later. Moving on. Prior to your recent adoption by the Mills; who had guardianship of you in the wake of your parents' deaths and where did you live? If you had more than one set of guardians during that time, please include the dates with which they had custody of you._"

Harry pulled his legs up onto the chair and glared at the tabletop as he reluctantly answered, "_From November fourteenth of two-thousand-twenty-one until June twenty-fourth of two-thousand-twenty-five, I was a ward of Albus Dumbledore and I was kept under house arrest at Hogwarts Castle in Scotland. From November second of two-thousand-eleven until November sixth of two-thousand-nineteen, I lived with my maternal aunt and her husband in Surrey, England._"

"_What were your aunt and uncle's names?_"

Harry pressed his lips together and tucked his chin against his chest. Even now, six years since he'd last seen (let alone spoken to) his relatives, he could not bring himself to speak their names. It had been bad enough that someone had told Agil their names.

"_Potter-kun, I need their names._"

"_His aunt's name is Dursley Petunia and his uncle's name is Dursley Vernon,_" Kazuto supplied when Harry just shook his head no in response to Mr. Kikuoka's second prompt. The moment the older teen had named both of his relatives, Harry snapped his head up to shoot him a betrayed look. "_Don't give me that look, James; you need to stop protecting them out of some misguided sense of obligation._"

"_I wasn't trying to protect them; I was protecting myself,_" Harry grumbled defensively in reply.

"_Protecting yourself from what?_" Mr. Kikuoka inquired as he glanced between the two teens.

"_Nothing,_" Harry muttered as he sank lower into his chair.

Mr. Kikuoka frowned in response to Harry's non-answer but let the matter drop as he instead asked, "_There was a two year period between when your aunt last had custody of you and when Dumbledore-san assumed custody of you; where were you and who was your guardian during those two years?_"

Harry opened his mouth to answer only to snap it shut when the waiter returned carrying their orders. He then used the pretense of sitting up to pour himself a cup of tea in order to buy himself another minute in which to calm himself as he tried not to think of the two years he'd been trapped in Aincrad while his body had been locked up and forgotten in the cupboard under the stairs. Once the waiter had disappeared once more and it looked like Mr. Kikuoka was about to ask his question a second time, Harry answered the man.

"_From November sixth of two-thousand-nineteen until November seventh of two-thousand-twenty-one, I had been trapped alongside the other nine-thousand, nine-hundred, ninety-nine other players that Kayaba Akihiko had taken hostage. I didn't really have a guardian in Aincrad but Agil watched out for me after my adult avatar had been scrubbed in a glitch. So did Kirito, Asuna, Klein, and Lisbeth._"

"_Yes, but where was your physical body during that time? Which hospital were you admitted to?_"

Harry let out a low, humorless laugh as he picked up the chopsticks he'd been provided and poked at the colorful array of raw fish and vegetables that were tucked into the bowl of sushi rice that was his chirashizushi. He then glanced up from his lunch to pin Mr. Kikuoka with haunted eyes as he answered, "_My relatives did not bother taking me to the hospital; I was sealed up in my cupboard under the stairs and left to rot while they went about their merry little lives as if I had never existed. If not for my 'gift', then I would be dead._"

His answer caught Mr. Kikuoka off guard for a moment and Harry blanked his face of emotion in response to the pity he saw form on the man's face a heartbeat later. He then dropped his attention back to his food so he wouldn't have to think about the elephant in the room and shifted a few of the toppings to the side so he could dig out a scoop of rice to roll up in a strip of raw tuna before he lifted the little bundle up to his mouth.

The diminutive teen let out an automatic hum of appreciation just two seconds later in response to the explosion of flavor and texture that hit his tongue the moment he bit down on the fish and rice; real sushi tasted ten times better than he remembered the sushi he'd eaten while trapped in Aincrad tasting.

Harry got to enjoy another five bites of his lunch before Mr. Kikuoka collected himself enough to ask, "_You were nine years old at the time that the SAO software was originally released; how is it that you were able to have a NERDLES implanted when the age restrictions prohibited the surgical technicians from implanting the devices in anyone under the age of thirteen?_"

"_My uncle had bought a spare chip when he got the system for my cousin. At the time, I hadn't known that they were supposed to be surgically implanted and after studying the picture on the packaging, I jammed the chip onto the back of my neck where I thought it was supposed to go and promptly forgot about it._"

"_Just sticking the chip to the base of your skull like that should not have allowed it to work properly. The chips had to be integrated into with the neural system in order for the system to interact with your brain and the chip would have needed to be activated during the implantation process,_" Mr. Kikuoka stated as he frowned at Harry yet again. "_Although, I suppose I also need to take into consideration the unpredictability of your 'gift'. Did you have to replace the chip each time you wanted to connect to the Nerve Gear?_"

"_No._"

"_Is that because you attached the chip to your neck on the day that SAO went live?_"

"_No, I was a beta tester,_" Harry corrected after he swallowed another bite.

"_Are you implying that you were able to use the Nerve Gear without a NERDLES after the chip fell off the first time you removed the helmet?_"

"_No, the chip did not fall off. I'm not really sure what happened to it. But I know it didn't fall off because I would have found it if it had. I just figured that it got stuck to the helmet or something._"

"_Actually, according to the medical reports that your godfather allowed us to read, the NERDLES chip was fused to your spinal cord at the base of your skull,_" Kazuto interjected, "_At least, Gil and I believe that the object fused to your spine is the NERDLES chip since the nurse who wrote the report was uncertain as to the origins of the object. According to the report, she was also unable to remove said object due to how tightly it had been integrated into your spinal cord. An x-ray or an MRI of the area would probably allow us to identify the object._"

"_I will make the arrangements for the necessary scans and a complete physical,_" Mr. Kikuoka insisted as he pulled a small day planner out of his briefcase and penciled in a note. "_Moving on, you just stated that you were a beta tester; can you tell me when you arrived in Japan, where you obtained the software, and the date you returned to England?_"

"_This is my first trip to Japan. My relatives never bothered to take me with them when they ate out let alone if they left the country on vacation. As for where my uncle got the beta version of SAO; he shelled out a couple thousand _quid_ to buy it from a client at work at the beginning of August two-thousand-nineteen._"

"Quid_?_"

"_Sorry, _quid_ is slang for pounds sterling._"

"_Ah, I see. And your uncle paid someone a couple thousand pounds to purchase a copy of the beta version of Ken no Sekai even though the original one thousand copies were distributed free of charge?_"

"_Hai._"

"_Why…?_" Mr. Kikuoka inquired as his brow furrowed in confusion.

"_My cousin wanted the game._"

"_Does that mean that your cousin played the game as well, then?_"

"_Yeah, he played for a couple of days before my uncle threw everything in the trash because of something my cousin had said about the game. I stole the stuff from the trash because I wanted to see what it was that made my uncle throw it away. I fell in love with Aincrad from the moment I first set foot in Hajimari no Machi and returned there every chance I got until the beta test was shut down._"

Mr. Kikuoka drummed his fingers on the table for a moment before he fished a laptop out of his briefcase. He quickly booted up the portable computer and as he waited for the operating system to load, he continuously glanced between the laptop and Harry. As soon as the operating system finished loading, he gave his full attention to the device as he logged into the machine, opened a couple of programs, and riffled through several files.

"_Do you remember the exact date you logged on for the first time?_"

"_Hai, it was August fifteenth, two-thousand-nineteen and it was around midnight; London Time._"

"_That would have had you logging in on the sixteenth, Tokyo Time,_" Mr. Kikuoka murmured under his breath as he typed away on his laptop. "_What was your screen name during the beta test?_"

"_James._"

After another minute, Mr. Kikuoka let out a triumphant 'ah-ha!' before he spun the laptop around so that Harry could see the screen as he asked, "_Was this your avatar during the beta test?_"

Harry took in the adult avatar he'd created the first time he played SAO and smiled wistfully as he recalled how much fun he'd had during the time he'd spent as Tracker James. After another several seconds passed, Harry nodded his head and replied with a quiet, "_Yes._"

"_Do you also remember the first time your cousin logged into the beta version and what his screen name was?_"

"_He first played the game on the eighth and the name he played under was _Dudmeister_._"

Kazuto choked on his cappuccino when he heard the ridiculous name that Dudley had used as a screen name and Harry glanced sideways to shoot a smirk at the older teen. Kazuto rolled his eyes and snorted in return before he returned his attention to the assortment of fancy desserts he'd ordered in place of an actual lunch.

"_Do you know if this was his avatar?_"

Harry took in the buff blond avatar that looked a lot like Thor from the Marvel Comics and nodded before he stuffed another bite of sushi into his mouth. His cousin had chosen to create an avatar that was as far removed from his actual looks as possible aside from the blonde hair they both shared. Harry had at least remained somewhat true to his actual form; only he'd pictured himself as he thought he might look as a twenty year old.

"_How did your uncle receive the beta software? Did the person he purchased it from hand it to him directly or was it shipped through the mail?_"

"_It was delivered by special courier on the eighth._"

"_Do you know the name of the person who sold your uncle the software?_"

"_No._"

"_Do you know how your uncle paid for the software? If he used cash, check, or charge?_"

"_No._"

"_And the full version of the game? How did you get a hold of that?_"

"_My uncle pre-ordered the full version the same day he helped set up my cousin's profile when my cousin whined and begged him to. I think he forgot all about it though because he never canceled the order. The CD then arrived on the second of November that year and I snuck it out of the mail and hid it in my cupboard so my relatives would not find it and send it back._"

"_What time did you log onto the server on the day the game went live?_" Mr. Kikuoka asked next after he'd spent several minutes typing.

"_As soon as it went online. I'd gotten up extra early that morning so I could have time to play before I had to make breakfast for my relatives and get ready for school._"

"_Did you use the same name and avatar?_"

"_Yeah, I'd imported my beta avatar instead of creating a new one._"

"_How long were you online before you discovered that you couldn't log out?_"

"_An hour and a half and I spent another hour trying to contact a GM to find out what was going on but I never did get a hold of one._"

"_Do you recall where you were within the game at the time?_"

"_Yeah, I was out in one of the more distant dungeon fields that surrounded Hajimari no Machi._"

"_What were you doing out there?_"

"_Testing my Trapping Skill against a Frenzy Boar for the Experience and Skill Points._"

Mr. Kikuoka let out an explosive sigh as he spent another five minutes typing and clicking away on the laptop; a scowl gradually forming on his face during that time. At the end of those five minutes, he spun the laptop around one last time to present a list of names to Harry.

"_What you see here is a list of all the people who logged into the SAO server on the day of the launch that had screen names that started with the letters 'JA' and your screen name is not there. As far as the data is concerned; you never logged onto the server that day._"

"_After we had been trapped in the game, Fukkatsu no Heya had been turned into a huge checklist of the living and a monument of the dead instead of the respawn point for those killed in the dungeons,_" Kazuto stated as he set his fork down on his plate. "_James had been caught up in a glitch in the system just six weeks into the game and he was believed to be dead as several other players had seen his avatar shatter while on a minor Side Quest up on the third floor. When I'd gone to check the monument for his name, instead of finding his name crossed out like the names of those who had died, his name had vanished from the monument entirely._"

"_You said he was caught up in a glitch? What kind of glitch?_"

"_Upon reaching level thirty, I became an unstable element within the game,_" Harry answered as he drew his feet up into the chair with him once more, wrapped his arms around his legs, and pressed his face against his knees; his voice low and haunted as he spoke of the day his innocence had been stripped from him. "_I shattered over and over again and I was in so much pain. It felt as if I was being ripped apart from the inside out for __**hours **__and everything burned. When it was finally over and I stopped shattering, I was no longer in my original avatar and looked like I do now; only without the scars. Everything changed after that._"

"_What do you mean everything changed?_"

"_The game became more real instead of just mimicking things in real life. The changes were most obvious when it came to items and monsters. Items in my inventory didn't expire unless they were damaged and damaged Items didn't shatter unless I let go of them. What happened with the monsters was even worse. Instead of their attacks dropping my HP, they drew blood, hurt like an actual injury would, and left scars even if I used Healing Potions or Crystals._"

"_That shouldn't have been possible; the Nerve Gear did not target the pain centers._"

"_Gil hypothesized that James's improperly implanted NERDLES was responsible for the pain that James felt when he was injured within the game,_" Kazuto offered when Harry's only response to Mr. Kikuoka's protest was an inelegant snort that had been muffled by his legs.

"_Hnn, yes; I could see an improperly seated NERDLES sending mixed signals to the brain. It is also possible that Potter-kun's 'gift' interfered with the impulses the chip sent to the brain or possibly amplified the signals. Further speculation on the matter will have to wait until after Potter-kun's medical has been completed,_" Mr. Kikuoka mused in a thoughtful tone as his fingers tapped away at the keyboard of his laptop. "_Were those the only changes you'd noticed or were there more?_"

"_My game classification on my Stat Page changed that day too._"

"_What do you mean your classification changed?_"

"_After the glitch, I was no longer classified as a human player._"

"_James,_" Kazuto warned as he reached out to drop a hand on Harry's head.

"_What was your new classification after the glitch?_"

"_It's not important,_" Kazuto insisted and Harry lifted his head just enough to peer through his fringe at Mr. Kikuoka; the wizard noting the shrewd expression that the man was now giving the older teen in response to him butting in to keep Harry from giving the man too much information. "_What is important is that the glitch caused an anomaly that could potentially be the reason why there is no longer a record of James within the system files._"

"_What date did the glitch occur on?_" Mr. Kikuoka asked as he pulled the laptop back around so he could start another search.

"_December twenty-first,_" Harry replied as he uncurled himself enough so he could grab his tea cup.

"_Do you remember which dungeon you were in that day?_"

"_Aa, I was in the Furgrin Forest on the third floor._"

"_Were you alone at the time?_"

"_No, I was with the Kazehana Guild; they'd requested my help to collect an ingredient they needed to make a stronger Healing Potion. We'd been facing the Furgrin Boss, Foulnor Furgrin the Fanged. I didn't have any skills to help fight the Boss at that time though, so I had lured a bunch of the normal Furgrins away from the Boss Fight so the others would have a fighting chance to defeat Foulnor without worrying about the other Furgrins. It was just after I killed the last five of the Furgrins in a Spiked Pit Trap and leveled up that the glitch occurred._"

"_Were you in an actual 'party' with the guild at the time or were you just accompanying them to the dungeon?_"

"_I'd partied up with them._"

"_Did any members of the guild witness what had happened to you once you were caught in the glitch? Or were they still caught up in fighting the boss at the time?_"

"_All of them came running when they heard me scream and they watched me shatter three or four times before they fled._"

"_They left you behind? Even though you were in obvious distress?_" Mr. Kikuoka demanded as he tore his eyes away from the laptop's display to glance at Harry.

"_They were terrified,_" Kazuto interjected before Harry could answer him. "_Gil and I had spoken to Riku, the guild's leader, about what the guild had seen and during that conversation, he'd told us that he'd feared they too would be caught up in whatever it was that had happened to James._"

"_Why didn't they return for him later? He should have still been a member of their party at the time and they would have had to have known that he had survived the glitch._"

"_They'd ended the party when they ran,_" Kazuto answered. "_They hadn't known what was happening to James or what had triggered the incident and they hadn't wanted to risk being hunted down due to the connection that remaining partied up with him might have created. They'd even gone so far as to delete his name from their Contact Lists in case they could be tracked that way too. It was cruel and cowardly of them to behave that way but given the constant fear of death around every corner, I'm hardly surprised that they had freaked out._"

"_I was glad they didn't stay,_" Harry added quietly as he rolled his tea cup back and forth in his hands. "_I didn't want to see anyone after what had happened. I was terrified of being hunted and hated and accused of cheating because I'd kept my avatar when everyone else's had been lost on the first night. I hadn't wanted Agil or Kirito to find me either but he wouldn't leave me alone._"

Mr. Kikuoka hummed an acknowledgement as he returned his gaze to his laptop and continued typing away. Harry tensely waited for another question but after a few minutes had passed without one, he relaxed a little and returned his attention to his lunch. The man still hadn't asked any more questions by the time Harry had finished off his chirashizushi and the soon to be fifteen year old grew a little wary as he studied the guy's profile and took note of how tense and irritated the man looked.

"_Is there a problem, Kikuoka-san?_" Kazuto demanded when another ten minutes of silence had passed; the older teen had obviously noticed the same thing that Harry had – only he'd felt far more confident in interrupting the man's work while Harry felt it would have been far too rude of him to do so.

"_Aside from the fact that I still can't find a legitimate trace of Ghost Boy here outside of the beta test…? Yes, all seven members of the Kazehana Guild were amongst those who did not survive the game. In fact, they were taken out less than a week after Potter-kun was caught up in the glitch._"

"_They died…?_" Harry blurted out in horror; he hadn't even tried to find out what had happened to them after they'd fled from the Furgrin Forest. In fact, he'd avoided any and all of the clients he'd taken prior to the glitch; he hadn't wanted any one to connect him to Tracker James after his adult avatar had been scrubbed.

"_Yes, their names are listed amongst the victims of the Laughing Coffin Guild. I take it you did not attempt to contact them at any point after the glitch?_"

"_I avoided everyone that I'd ever partied up with after I'd glitched out, the only exception was otousan… err, Agil and that was only because he stubbornly refused to let me disappear. I… I hadn't wanted any one else to find out what had happened to me._"

"_What of the other individuals on your Friend List? Did you keep in touch with any of them or did you delete everyone but Agil off of your list after the glitch?_"

"_Agil was the only one on my list. I didn't add Kirito until after the first Christmas we'd spent in the game and the other three players on my list were added much later._"

"_Were you ever, at any point, a member of a guild?_"

"_No, I remained a solo player the entire time; I did party up with Agil, Kirito, Asuna, and Lisbeth sometimes – mostly with Agil though. And I sometimes tagged along to dungeons with the Fuurinkazan after I met them in September of two-thousand-twenty._"

"_Do you remember all of the names of the individuals or other guilds that you'd partied up with prior to the glitch?_"

"_I don't remember the names of the any of the solo players that paid me to help them locate an item or to get through a dungeon but aside from the Kazehana Guild, I also did a job for the Silver Flags Guild, a couple of jobs for the Golden Apple Guild, and I spent three days with the Whirling Blades Guild._"

"_The Silver Flags and Whirling Blades Guilds were both eliminated by Titan's Hands and the only known survivor from either group was the leader of the Silver Flags,_" Mr. Kikuoka announced a moment later. "_It would appear that most of the members of the Golden Apple Guild survived, however; though their leader was murdered by the Laughing Coffin Guild and her real life husband and in-game SIC was implicated as an accomplice. If I was a suspicious man, the fact that so many of the acquaintances that you interacted with turned up dead would be triggering all kinds of red flags._"

"_I am __**not**__ a murderer!_" Harry hissed angrily as the cup in his hand exploded before the pieces shattered into dozens of red crystals that vanished a heartbeat later; the small display of accidental magic that mimicked the special effects of an object's destruction from a virtual game startling the man.

"_James; calm down,_" Kazuto urged as he replaced his hand on Harry's head before he shot an annoyed glare at Mr. Kikuoka in response to the veiled accusation. "_No one has accused you of killing anyone and you are not in any trouble._"

"_You have to admit that it is rather convenient that the people he had interacted with prior to the glitch turned up dead at some point after not long after he was caught in the glitch. He even admitted that he hadn't wanted any of them to see him; so what was to stop him from 'making' certain that they disappeared to protect himself?_" Mr. Kikuoka calmly pointed out once he'd regained his aplomb. "_The fact that we can find no record of him also means that it is impossible to rule out his involvement in their deaths because we can't pinpoint his location at the time they had died or been killed. Nor can we confirm that he did not have contact with any of the murderers._"

"_By that same reasoning, you also do not have any proof that he __**was**__ involved!_" Kazuto countered heatedly as he half rose out of his seat and slapped his hands on the table; drawing more than a few annoyed and curious looks from the other customers. "_There were also a good number of people he had interacted with that did not die; myself, Agil, Asuna, Rika, Ryoutarou and the rest of the Fuurinkazan, and the handful of survivors from the various guilds he interacted with are just a few examples._"

"_Yet you also can't deny that he was not involved with the death of a man by the name of Quirrell Quirinus._"

Harry's breath hitched as he immediately realized that Mr. Kikuoka was referring to the fact that he'd shattered Professor Quirrell at the end of his first year, back when he'd still firmly believed that he was trapped on a server.

"_If you are aware of that information, then you will also know that James had been acting in self defense at the time and that no charges were filed against him for the professor's death due to the circumstances surrounding the death._"

"_Actually, I know no such thing. The only information released outside of Britain's 'gifted' community was the fact that Quirrell was dead, that he'd died on the school's campus, and that Mr. Potter was involved. There was never any mention made of an investigation into the matter, let alone an actual trial._"

Harry ignored the inquisitive look that the man was giving him; he did _not_ want to talk about Quirrell or Hogwarts. He also didn't know if he was actually allowed to talk to Mr. Kikuoka about the magical world; just because the man knew about wizards and magic and worked for the government didn't mean that it was okay for Harry to tell him anything about what had happened at Hogwarts. For all he knew, there were international laws against it. And while he was more than willing to break laws for Agil and the others, he didn't really know this man and didn't know if he could trust him.

The fact that Agil _didn't_ like or really trust the man was a huge strike against him.

"_Would you be willing to clear things up for me regarding the death of Quirrell, Potter-kun?_"

"_No._"

"_Not even to justify your involvement in his death?_"

"_It is my understanding that there are laws that prohibit the 'gifted' from speaking of their world to those who are not 'gifted',_" Kazuto drawled as he dropped back down into his chair and once again adopted an insolent pose. "_We only have your word that you are legally entitled to that information. I will relay your interest in James's experiences over the past four years to Gil so that he can speak to the local representative in order to confirm your security clearance. In the mean time, you requested this meeting to grill James about his experiences in SAO; not his years at Hogwarts._"

Mr. Kikuoka looked more than a little annoyed by Kazuto's deflection while Harry felt nothing but fond appreciation for his friend's willingness to step in on his behalf. Sure, he probably could have stonewalled the man just as easily but he was irritated and upset enough about the man stirring up bad memories that he probably would have also said or done something that could have gotten him in trouble. There was also a slight chance that the man could have manipulated Harry into giving the answers he wanted if Kazuto hadn't been there; Harry had nearly slipped up and revealed his status as an Immortal Object.

A status that had apparently followed him into the real world based on his experiences over the past four years.

An irritated scowl soon formed on Harry's face and he defensively crossed his arms over his chest unconsciously as his thoughts automatically turned to his unchanging physical status next. Part of him couldn't help but wonder if his continued classification as an Immortal Object was linked to his lack of growth. He knew his magic or some magic was involved as well but he tried not to think about his affinity for Soul Magic because he was still rather uncomfortable with the idea that he might have unconsciously fiddled with Hermione's soul.

"_Very well, Kazuto,_" Mr. Kikuoka finally conceded; the sound of his voice drawing Harry out of his thoughts before he could dwell on the effects his magic might have had on his friend for more than a few seconds. The man then returned his attention to Harry as he asked, "_Potter-kun, did you at any point participate in any boss fights outside of the Furgrin Boss on the day of the glitch?_"

"_Yeah._"

"_Would you be able to provide me with a list of those bosses that you faced, their dungeon locations or their floor levels if you can't remember the name of the dungeon, the date and time you faced them, the type or types of weapons you used to fight them, and who you fought alongside?_"

"_Yeah, I'm pretty sure I remember most of them. Do you have something I could write all that stuff down on?_"

Mr. Kikuoka pulled a legal pad and a ballpoint pen from his briefcase and slid them across the table in response to Harry's request. Harry murmured an absent 'thank you' as he twisted the point of the pen out and promptly began listing the various bosses that he'd faced during his time in Aincrad in the approximate order that he faced them in. Once he'd finished listing their names, he quickly counted them to make sure he hadn't missed any before he went back and filled in the rest of the information.

There were a few details he couldn't remember (especially when it came to the lesser bosses that he had faced) but he could probably pull that information from his Game Log if it was needed. He would have looked that information up right then and there if it wasn't for the fact that he was in public and surrounded by non-magicals. By the time he had finished writing down everything he'd remembered, he had over ninety bosses listed. The majority of those bosses were lesser bosses that he'd defeated to obtain Special/Rare Items and Ingredients while only ten of them were Floor Bosses or Dragons.

After skimming through the list one last time, Harry passed the list back to Mr. Kikuoka as he stated, "_That's all of them that I can remember. I can pull an exact list off my Game Log later if you need it though._"

"_Are you implying that you can access your SAO data through one of the Seed Worlds?_" Mr. Kikuoka demanded as he dropped the legal pad in surprise.

"_Seed worlds…? What are those?_"

"_That is what we call the various virtual realities that were created using a rough copy of Aincrad's programming._"

Harry blanched when he realized that the man thought he was logging into another server via the Nerve Gear. His stomach lurched a split second later over the idea of Diving into another world and he slapped a hand over his mouth when he tasted bile in the back of hose throat. He then began to violently shake his head no in response to the question. There was no way in hell that he was ever going to willingly send his consciousness onto another server (let alone risk his soul getting stuck on one a second time!).

As much as he'd loved Aincrad, he'd only _just_ been reunited with Agil and the mere thought that he could be taken away from him again terrified him.

"_James, you need to calm down; no one is going to force you to visit another server, if you don't want to,_" Kazuto firmly stated as he pulled Harry's chair closer to him so that he could pull him into a partial hug. Harry clung to the nineteen year old in return to anchor himself in the here and now in order to remind himself that he was free and in the real world while he only half listened to Kazuto speaking to Mr. Kikuoka over his head. "_I believe it would be in James's best interest to call it a day. If you still have more questions, you can contact me later to set up another meeting in a week or two._"

"_I would prefer to wrap things up today…_"

"_Not gonna happen; I'm not about to let you push James into a complete panic just so you can get answers. He's under more than enough stress right now and he gave you plenty of information to start,_" Kazuto retorted as he climbed to his feet and hauled Harry up with him when Harry refused to let go of him. "_Rescheduling will also give you time to look into the data on the boss fights that he just gave to you or contact those survivors that were part of the guilds that he'd named earlier._"

Kazuto then began guiding Harry out of the restaurant without waiting for Mr. Kikuoka to dismiss them and without actually saying goodbye. The not-quite fifteen year old felt a little awkward about their rude departure but he was also glad that Kazuto had ended the meeting when he did. All Harry wanted right that minute was to go home and see Agil so he could see for himself that his father hadn't disappeared again.

Harry wouldn't let go of Kazuto until they reached his motorcycle and even then he only let go long enough for both of them to put on their helmets and mount the bike before he latched onto him again. It was rather childish of him but he didn't really care at the moment because he was still off-kilter. Unlike their initial journey through the city, Harry didn't enjoy the trip back to home as he kept his face pressed to Kazuto's back and his eyes closed.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Aa – yes  
Chigau – can be used to mean wrong, no, or to differ  
Chirashizushi – scattered sushi; a bowl of sushi rice with raw/uncooked toppings and garnishes arranged on top  
Fukkatsu no Heya – Room of Resurrection  
Hajimari no Machi – Starting City or Town of Beginnings  
Kazehana – wind flower (sort of a random name I chose for the guild that had witnessed Harry shattering repeatedly on the day he'd gotten caught in the glitch)  
Konnichiwa – hello, good afternoon

**Game Terminology:**

FullDive – the use of technology to fully immerse one's conscience in a virtual reality  
Game Log – a list of important events/dates automatically generated by the game as you progress through the game (a non-canon aspect for SAO, I believe)  
Guild – group of players that work together for a common goal  
GM – **G**ame **M**oderator – a group of players that were hired/selected to help the rest of the players by answering questions about the game, police those players breaking the rules, and collecting information about bugs found within the game so that they could be fixed  
NERDLES – **Ner**ve **D**irect **L**inkage **E**nvironment **S**ystem (a surgically implanted chip that allows the FullDive system to interface with the brain – the surgically implanted part may or may not be canon as it was something I thought seemed more logical than it just being part of the interface helmet)  
Nerve Gear – equipment created by Kayaba Akihiko (Argus); allows the user to enter FullDive  
Party – a group of two or more individuals that work together for a period of time or a set task  
SAO – **S**word **A**rt **O**nline  
Seed Worlds – this was the name that I assigned to those Virtual Realities that were born from the 'seed' that Kayaba presented to Kirito at the end of the ALO Arc (not sure if it is canon or not as I was too lazy to check and see if there was a term for those worlds or not)  
SIC – **S**econd **i**n **C**ommand (typically considered a military acronym)  
Solo Player – a player that moves through the game alone

**Notes:**

Guilds – The Silver Flags and Golden Apple Guilds are both canon guilds and their fate as described in the story was canon. The other two unfamiliar guilds mentioned (Kazehana and Whirling Blades) are both non-canon and created by myself in order to fill in a bit of back story about some of the other individuals that Harry had interacted with during the game. Fuurinkazan is, of course, Klein (Ryoutarou)'s guild and canon as well (obviously).

* * *

**AN:** _Well, I managed to get this chapter cleaned up enough that I wouldn't regret posting it. Kikuoka was a right pain for me to write and parts of this chapter still feel forced but it is at least much better than the original chapter I had written. He was the sole reason why this chapter was held up for as long as it was. Of course, now Kirito is being a pain in the next chapter and I'm pretty certain his refusal to cooperate is entirely due to me forcing him to work with Kikuoka in this chapter. _

_Anywho, I know I said I wasn't going to update until I finished the summer arc but with the tug of war I'm currently having with my muses on this story, I'll just go ahead and post this now since I had promised I'd have that arc up last month back when I post the previous chapter. Not sure when the next chapter will be up, since I haven't finished cleaning up the rough spots that I am unhappy with yet. As usual, I'll keep a progress report on the next chapter/rest of the arc up on my author's page and you can check there for posting schedules for this story as well as my other ones. ~ Jenn_


	44. Fallout

**Disclaimer:** _Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction._

**Warnings:** _Mild to moderate violence, character death, foul language, alternate universe (i.e. kiss HP canon goodbye), angst, drama, starts pre-Hogwarts Era, and who knows what else. _

**AN:** _This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance._

* * *

Chapter Forty-Four: Fallout

_Thursday, July 24, 2025 3:08 PM_

Kazuto did his best to ignore the helmet digging into his back as he parked his bike in the small alley that sat beside the Dicey Café. He then reluctantly peeled James's arms off of his waist so that they could dismount the motorcycle. Once James was standing on his own two feet, Kazuto removed their helmets and secured his bike before he guided the teen towards the entrance to Gil's café. He made no move to stop James's hands from latching onto his shirt again the moment they began moving.

He completely understood the reasons for the kid's current clinginess; James was desperately trying to hold onto reality.

A scowl formed on Kazuto's face as he recalled just how James had ended up in his current state. He'd known that Kikuoka could be a callus bastard at times but he'd hoped that the man would actually restrain himself when dealing with the younger teen. Part of him was unsurprised that Kikuoka had all but accused James of killing other players (he'd accused Kazuto of the same thing at one point) but the rest of him was greatly annoyed he had. Gil was going to be pissed as all hell about it when he heard what had happened though.

More concerning than Kikuoka's not-quite-subtle accusation, was James's response to the mere idea of logging onto another server to visit a virtual world; not that he was all that surprised by the near-panic that the suggestion of visiting one of the Seed Worlds had garnered. Based on that reaction, he suspected the kid was going to completely flip out the moment he learned that all of them visited ALfheim and New Aincrad frequently. Although, Kazuto was pretty certain that James would actually be bothered the most by the fact that Gil still played a virtual game.

Kazuto had suspected that the younger boy might respond that way and that suspicion was the main reason why he hadn't introduced James to Yui through the interactive program he'd created to allow the AI to interact with the real world yet. Even though that was a reaction he had anticipated, Kazuto couldn't help but think that it was tragic that someone who had loved Aincrad as much as James had was now terrified of returning to the very place he'd once considered home.

Not that he blamed James for being afraid.

He too had been afraid of Diving back into a server.

If not for his need to find and save Asuna, he probably never would have gotten over that fear. There was no driving need for James to Dive into a new world though. The fact that he'd lived through another four years while still believing that he was trapped on a server hadn't really helped either. And his magic (a concept that Kazuto was still trying to wrap his head around at times) didn't exactly help matters because magic had facilitated James's belief that he had still been trapped on a server.

Pulling his head out of his thoughts, Kazuto opened the door and ushered James into the Dicey Café. He then guided the teen over to the bar where Gil was currently serving the Café's only customer. The moment James caught sight of Gil, he dropped his hold on Kazuto's shirt and practically teleported to Gil's side in order to latch onto the older man instead. Knowing that Gil would want to know what had happened and exactly what had triggered James's current behavior, Kazuto took a seat at the opposite end of the bar as the customer.

It would be an hour before Gil managed to find time to confront Kazuto about the meeting with Kikuoka. Coincidentally, that was also how long it took for James to regain his balance enough to let go of Gil. The gaki had slunk away to the kitchen to hang out with Gil's wife after that; the teen obviously more than a little embarrassed about his recent anxiety attack. The moment that James had disappeared through the swinging doors leading to the kitchen and the café's newest customer had been served, Gil approached Kazuto and leaned on the bar.

"_What happened?_" Gil demanded the moment their gazes met.

"_Kikuoka pushed a few buttons and I ended the meeting before James could devolve into a complete panic._"

"_I had already figured that much out on my own, Kazuto. I want to know what it was that man said or asked that set James off like that. It's been weeks since the last time he was that clingy!_"

"_To start, he recognized James the moment he saw him. It turns out that James's fame from what happened to him and his parents when he was a baby is a little more wide-spread than we were originally led to believe. He's not like James, though; he only knows about that world because of his position in the government. Kikuoka insisted that he hadn't known about James being part of the game until he saw him and he seemed to be telling the truth. He'd actually been rather shocked to learn that James had been able to use the Nerve Gear despite…_" Kazuto trailed off and glanced about the café before he finished, "…_his family 'gift'._"

"_Then why didn't he recognize James from the drawings we'd given him for years ago?_"

"_He claimed that he'd not seen an actual picture of James until last year because the British magic community didn't release one until the gaki got caught up in that tournament he entered. He also said he hadn't bothered to check our drawing against any photos of James because he had no reason to believe that James had been part of SAO for pretty much the same reason why we hadn't bothered to look outside of Japan when we were trying to hunt him down prior to receiving Granger-chan's letter._"

"_How did the gaki react to being recognized?_"

"_He seemed a touch annoyed and wary; he scowled at Kikuoka but I think that was mostly due to the fact that Kikuoka addressed him Harry when he first recognized him. He grew even more irritated when Kikuoka asked about the Dursleys and insisted on knowing their names. James was most displeased when I gave him their names._"

"_That's not surprising; James dislikes others knowing anything about his relatives._"

"_True._"

"_That still doesn't tell me what it was that Kikuoka had said to trigger James's insecurities,_" Gil pointed out a moment later as he took a moment to look away from Kazuto to check on the handful of customers that were in the bar in order to make certain they didn't need anything.

Kazuto sighed and leaned back in his seat as he let his eyes drift towards the doors that led into the kitchen before he dropped his voice low enough that it wouldn't carry and stated, "_He practically accused James of killing or hiring someone to kill the clients that he'd taken prior to the glitch due to the fact that three of the guilds he'd worked with had been wiped out and another had fallen apart after the leader had been murdered. That upset James enough that he shattered the tea cup he'd had in his hands and the damn thing shattered like an object from the game; red crystals and all. Kikuoka and I were both caught off guard by that even though I knew James had claimed things shattered around him still._"

"_I'm going to wring his neck…_"

"_He also tried to get James to tell him what had happened to that professor that he'd killed in self-defense,_" Kazuto continued as he ignored Gil's interruption. "_James flat out refused to even talk about what had happened to the man despite Kikuoka's attempts to coax it out of him. I shut that line of questioning down and flat out told him that we'd need to confirm that he had permission to know about the magical world before we'd let him question James about anything that happened in the past four years._"

"_I don't care if he has permission or not; I refuse to allow that man a chance to badger James._"

"_That line of questioning actually wasn't sent James into a panic; it merely made him angry._"

"_I don't care,_" Gil growled in irritation. "_I'm still not going to allow Kikuoka to grill him about it._"

"_I wasn't implying you would._"

Gil brushed off Kazuto's rejoinder without even acknowledging it and demanded, "_Are you ever going to tell me what triggered James's anxiety attack?_"

"_It was the mere mention of him visiting another virtual reality._"

"_Why would Kikuoka want James to go on-line again?_"

"_He doesn't as far as I know; he misinterpreted a comment that James had made about his SAO Game Log. James had been referring to the fact that his… 'gift' allows him to access his Player Menu but Kikuoka mistook his comment to mean that he could still access his SAO Game Log while visiting one of the Seed Worlds._"

Gil stared at him for a moment before he wearily ran his hand over his face and muttered, "_I knew handling his old Nerve Gear bothered him but I thought for sure he'd be pleased to know that he could one day return to Aincrad._"

"_If we'd been able to find him right after the game ended, he probably would have been eager to go back._"

"_I'll talk to him about it later._"

Kazuto hummed an acknowledgement but was unable to comment further on the matter due to the customer seated at one of the booths on the other side of the room seeking Gil's attention. The arrival of several more customers saw the teen excusing himself since Gil would not have time to stop and chat with business picking up. He told the older man to call or e-mail him later if he still had questions before he left café and headed home.

* * *

_Thursday, July 24, 2025 11:18 PM_

Gil lightly rapped his knuckles on James's bedroom door before he opened it and stuck his head inside. He wasn't surprised to find his adopted son was still wide awake; the light peeking from beneath his closed door had been a rather large clue. Nor was he really all that surprised to see the teen seated on the floor, tucked up in the corner with his occamy half curled up on his lap. He'd been prepared for James to spend the night brooding or being plagued with nightmares after the way his meeting with Kikuoka had ended.

At first glance, the scene looked rather touching due to the fact that the reptilian bird was crooning gently while James ran his fingers through Hedwig's feathered scales. It was also kind of amusing to see the large creature attempt to curl up on James's lap when the occamy's total length was longer than James was tall. And the way Hedwig had wrapped her tail around James's shoulder almost made it look like she was giving the teen a hug.

It was on the second glance that the picture the pair painted turned rather tragic. James's green eyes that were normally full of life were dull and bloodshot. His complexion was pale and drawn and it made the scars on his face stand out rather starkly. Even worse than those though, were the tears coursing down James's cheeks as the fifteen year old cried without a sound and Gil felt a renewed urge to punch Kikuoka in the face for upsetting the teen with his careless words and intrusive questions.

Pushing down the renewed anger he felt towards the government employee for triggering his son's fears and insecurities with his insensitivity, Gil pushed the door the rest of the way open and quietly crossed the room. James started in surprise when his shadow fell over the teen and Gil felt his heart grow heavy when he saw a flush of shame creep into his son's cheeks before the gaki ducked his face to scrub away his tears. Heaving a mental sigh, Gil leaned down to scoop James up off of the floor (much to the occamy's displeasure) before he carried him over to the bed.

Once he had James settled on the mattress and half tucked beneath the covers, Gil sat down beside him and studied the teen's profile for several seconds before he stated, "_Kazuto told me what happened during your interview with Kikuoka this afternoon._" James cringed in response to the reminder of that disastrous meeting and Gil patiently waited until the teen to stop visibly floundering before he asked, "_Do you want to talk about it?_"

"_I don't like Kikuoka-san,_" James admitted after a brief hesitation. "_He was a bigger jerk than Kibaou*._"

"_I'm not all that fond of him either._"

"_I know; Kiri… er Kazuto told me that one of the reasons you didn't go with us to the meeting was because you didn't like the man._"

Gil ignored his son's slip regarding Kazuto's name as he let a wry grin twist the corners of his mouth up for a brief moment in response to the slight understatement Kazuto had given James regarding Gil's dislike of a certain government official before he grew somber once more and asked, "_Are you upset with me for not being there for you?_"

"_No, I know you've got more important things to do than babysit me all the time._"

"_James, there is nothing more important to me than yours and Mayumi's health and happiness,_" Gil lightly admonished as he tried not to be frustrated with James's skewed sense of self worth; it was an on-going (if subtle) battle he'd been fighting with the gaki since the moment they first met but most especially after his adult avatar had been scrubbed.

"_I don't want to be a burden._"

"_We've had this conversation a hundred times before, James; you are not a burden._"

James gave a wordless reply that was somewhere between a grunt and hum and Gil let out a soft huff when he realized that the gaki was going to remain stubborn. Rather than butt heads with the teen over that particular matter right that moment, Gil returned to the original topic in order to get James to open up about what was bothering him.

"_So, I know why I don't like Kikuoka but what exactly is that he said or did this afternoon that is still bugging you now?_"

"_He thinks I killed my old clients,_" James dully replied as he averted his face away from Gil.

"_We both know you didn't and while it is terrible that those people died, it is in no way your fault that they died._"

"_I know that… but I'm worried he's going to blame you or one of the others next. You guys were always so quick to defend me from those that were unhappy with me running amok in the dungeons and he'll try to accuse you of killing my old clients because they were against me leaving the safe zones or something._"

"_It's true that he might try to insinuate that that was what happened; but there are a few things you're forgetting._"

"_What do you mean?_" James asked in confusion as he snapped his gaze back to Gil's face.

"_First and foremost; Kikuoka had access to our game logs through the backup copy of the server. On top of that, he'd questioned each of us extensively and we were all cleared since we hadn't gone on any killing sprees. The small handful of lives that our group took were taken in self-defense or in defense of another. We also didn't instigate the fights that led to the deaths of those individuals. And finally, most of the confirmed murders that took place in SAO have already been solved and the culprits identified and punished for their crimes._ _So, Kikuoka will have no reason to accuse us of murder since we've already been cleared and the case has been officially closed._"

"_Then why did he try to blame me for them?_" James asked in a bewildered tone with a lost look on his face.

"_Because Kikuoka is an ass who likes to test people,_" Gill bluntly replied without hesitation as he pulled James into a hug in order to offer the teen a measure of comfort. "_He's also frustrated because until now he'd been completely unable to find any information on you outside of what he learned from those of us who remembered you. It wouldn't surprise me if he purposefully set out to knock you off balance in order to drag as much information from you as possible in order to solve the mystery surrounding your disappearance from the server files._"

"_I think it would have worked if Kirito hadn't been there to keep me from saying anything stupid,_" James admitted in a small voice as he clung tightly to Gil. "_I almost told him about my status as an Immortal Object after I described what had happened the day I glitched out at level thirty. I accidentally let slip that my player classification changed but Kirito stopped me before I could say anything further and he wouldn't let Kikuoka-san ask me any questions about it._"

Gil briefly tensed over James's admission (Kazuto had not mentioned _that_ little tidbit during their earlier conversation) before he forced himself to relax as he murmured, "_Try not to stress yourself out over being goaded into divulging as much as you did. And try not to worry about him trying to force you into spilling all of your secrets; we will not allow it. Nor will I allow him to take advantage of you._"

"_So, you aren't mad at me because I wasn't being careful of what I revealed?_"

"_I'm angry with Kikuoka for playing his little mind games with you in order to trick you into revealing things that are none of his business but no, I'm not mad at you._"

"_He didn't really play any mind games. He was just asking me a bunch of questions that brought up bad memories. I'm also a bit mad at Kir… er, Kazuto for giving him my relatives' names just because I wasn't going to._"

"_Why? Why are you so determined to protect them, James?_"

"_I'm not. I just…_"

"_Just what…?_" Gil prompted when James trailed off.

"_Nothing. It's not important._"

"_James…_"

"_It's stupid._"

"_Yet, whatever it is you think is stupid and unimportant is obviously bothering you and I can't help you deal with what it is that is bothering you if you don't give me something to work with here, gaki._"

For a brief moment, Gil thought James was going to stubbornly refuse to talk. There were some topics that his adopted son just absolutely refused to talk about and one of those topics just happened to be his relatives. Gil couldn't count the number of times that he'd wished the kid would trust him enough to open up to him about his so-called family during the years they'd been trapped in SAO. Sure, he could have tried harder to get that information but at the time he'd been worried that James would disappear on him if he pushed too hard.

Just when he was ready to resign himself to once again being stonewalled by the teen, he felt the tension bleed out of James's small frame a split second before James unconsciously slipped into English as he quietly admitted, "I'm scared."

Gil gently rubbed circles on James's back and held his breath while he waited to see if his son would continue on his own lest an attempt on his part to coax the teen into saying more drove him to clam up instead. His patience and silent support would be rewarded just a couple of minutes later when James hesitantly continued speaking.

"I'm not afraid of the Dursleys. They never hit me or even really touched me because they didn't want my freakishness to contaminate them. The things they said used to hurt me when I was little but I'd mostly grown used to their nasty remarks about me and my parents and so ignored the things they said. I'd even grown used to being blamed for anything and everything that went wrong and ignored their threats because they never actually followed through on them. That was just they way things were."

"Not that I was happy about that or anything. I hated living with the Dursleys. I hated the way they treated me. I really hated my stupid cupboard too. I even hated the fact that they were my relatives but no matter how mean they were, I couldn't bring myself to hate them the way they hated me; I didn't want to be like them. But the thing I hated the most about living with the Dursleys was the way they made me feel so small and insignificant and trapped. And I was so afraid that that was never going to change and that I would never amount to anything because I was just a stupid freak."

"Everything changed the day I stole Dudley's game console out of the trash. I broke so many rules that night but I couldn't stop myself. I didn't _want_ to stop myself. I needed to know what was terrible about the 'magic' that Dudley had been using in the game that it made Uncle Vernon toss Dudley's most prized possession into the rubbish bin. That was the first and only time I'd ever seen Dudley being punished for something. It was also the only time I'd ever seen Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon ignore Dudley's demands to have his things given back to him."

James paused for a moment and when he continued, his voice was filled with an echo of the wonder and excitement that Gil had often seen in James's eyes each time the teen had stumbled upon another of the many hidden wonders that had filled Aincrad, "I fell in love with Aincrad the moment I first set foot inside _Hajimari no Machi_. The town and the people inside of it were everything that my relatives hated. I spent hours just exploring every single inch of the town the first few times I could sneak on-line to play. I didn't even care about the game; I just wanted to see everything. It was bright and disorganized and colorful and just so… so _different_. Aincrad was brilliant. It was the home I always wanted."

"But best of all, in Aincrad, I was _free_," James proclaimed as he leaned back to meet Gil's gaze with glittering green eyes that desperately begged for understanding and acceptance. "Free to be whoever and what I wanted to be. Free to go wherever I wanted to go any time I wanted. And free to do whatever I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. There were no spiteful relatives breathing down my neck, no stupid made-up rules that only applied to me, no ridiculously long list of stupid chores to bust my ass on, and no bloody damn cupboard to double as both bedroom and prison."

Tears gathered in James's eyes at that point and the pint-sized wizard took a shuddering breath as the desperation in his eyes morphed into abject terror and his voice dropped to a whisper as he continued, "Kayaba tried to steal that freedom from me when he trapped all of us in the only place I'd ever thought of as my home. I refused to let him and refused to play by the rules everyone else made because they needed to feel like they had control of a situation in which they had no control. It was easy to pretend I was still free that way because there were no Dursleys and I could still be James."

"It was harder after the glitch. Everyone kept trying to lock me up again and force me to go back to being Harry just because I was a kid. If not for you and the others standing by me and helping me, I probably would have been locked up no matter what I did. And then… after Kirito beat Kayaba, the world shattered around me and I found myself locked up in Hogwarts where a bunch of people I thought were NPCs were trying to force me to be Harry again. They wanted me to be Harry and Harry, to me, is small and weak and helpless and nothing more than a prisoner and servant."

"I don't ever want to be Harry again," James insisted in a voice that cracked beneath the weight of his fear. "Harry had nothing; no home, no magic, no hope, and no family. And the Dursleys are everything that made Harry so weak and pathetic. They bound his heart and soul in a little box and he was content to keep his head down and let them walk all over him because it was _safer_. I can't and I _won't_ let anyone stuff me back in that box. The Dursleys are part of that box and each time someone else ties me to the Dursleys, it feels like they're trying to stuff me back into the bloody box I escaped from each time I set foot in Aincrad."

Gil felt a wave of weariness sweep through him as he wrapped his son up in another hug. It hadn't been hard for him to follow the twisted logic that James had used to reach the conclusion that being associated with the Dursleys in any way, shape, or form equated to being weak and helpless. He also found himself understanding the fierceness with which James had fought to keep every last inch of independence on a whole new level now that he had a slightly clearer picture of what the teen had experienced at the hands of his relatives.

It wasn't the physical abuse he had suspected and feared James had endured at the hands of his relatives (he could still vividly remember the bruises on James's SAO avatar when he'd first discovered James was a child) but in some ways, the mental and emotional abuse he'd suffered through had left far deeper scars. Being trapped in Aincrad for two years immediately followed by another four years of what amounted to house arrest in Hogwarts hadn't exactly done his son any favors. The teen had more issues than a magazine stand and that wasn't even touching on the physical problems that stemmed from the magic that had preserved his body while he was trapped on-line.

"_Is that the only reason why you avoid mentioning the Dursleys by name?_" Gil gently inquired after giving his son a few minutes to collect himself; the man purposefully switching back to Japanese in order to help James ground himself firmly in the present rather than allow him to get stuck in the past.

"_Ano… mostly…?_" James half asked and Gil held back a snort as he poked the teen in the side for the partially evasive answer. James squeaked and wriggled away from his finger before he sighed and muttered, "_I don't want anyone going to the Dursleys and asking them questions about me because then they'll know that I broke all of their rules._"

"_You're still afraid that you will end up back with them,_" Gil deduced the moment he connected the idea of broken rules to punishment for the breaking of said rules.

"_Yes… no… I don't know. It's not that I want to believe that that will happen. It's just that… being here with you seems like it's too good to be true because I spent four years trying to get here and I failed so many times because I never once allowed myself to consider that this world my be real until Hermione ambushed me at the start of fourth year. And even then, I stubbornly clung to my belief that I was locked in another game because it hurt to much to think that I might have locked myself in a trap of my own making. I was so stupid, tousan; if I had just sent you a letter when I first woke up, I could have been here four years ago!_"

"_Except you had no reason to believe that this world was real back then due to your magic twisting things,_" Gil gently pointed out in an effort to get James to stop beating himself up for not knowing what he knew now back when the Death Game had first ended. "_And don't forget, you had a number of people trying to tell you that your entire life had basically been one big lie thanks to all of the lies that the Dursleys had fed you through the years. That's not even touching on the fact that the people who rescued you from the Dursleys had no knowledge or understanding of SAO and what you had been put through during the time we were trapped in the game._"

"_I know that, tousan,_" James retorted in a strained voice. "_That doesn't make it hurt any less to know that I stabbed myself in the foot because I refused to stop and consider the possibility that there might be a single grain of truth in any of Dumbledore's claims about this world being real._"

Gil closed his eyes and dropped his chin down to rest on James's head while he tried to think of a way to lessen the guilt and regret that the teen was beating himself up with. He knew just telling James it wasn't his fault wouldn't convince the stubborn teen; he'd already tried that. After a couple of minutes, he came to the conclusion that the best way to get James to see that he wasn't to blame for their four year separation was take the blame himself and allow his son to either or agree or disagree with his claim.

He didn't think James would agree with him taking the blame though. Gil was ninety percent certain that James would completely disagree with the mere idea simply because James agreeing with him being to blame would mean that James secretly blamed him for not finding him sooner. And that would have equated to James being angry with him and there had been no indication that James was even just a little bit angry with him. Sure, the teen could be hiding his anger but Gil didn't think he was since there was no real reason for him to do so.

Well, it was still possible that James missed him too much to allow any anger he felt to show just yet but Gil was fairly confident that James had convinced himself that he and he alone was to blame for their four year separation.

There was only one way to find out.

"_Actually, if anyone is to blame for it taking so long for us to find you; it would be me,_" Gil announced with more than a little sincerity; he had always felt in his heart that he wasn't doing enough to find James even if he knew, logically, that he'd done everything he could do based upon the limited information he'd had on hand at the time. "_I'm an adult and I had access to far more resources than you did; it should have been easy for me to track you down even without knowing you'd never once set foot in Japan._"

James went completely still in his arms. After a few minutes of tense silence had ticked by, Gil grew a little concerned when he realized that the teen had been holding his breath during that time. It was at that point that he began to suspect that he might have miscalculated the way James would respond to his attempt to use reverse psychology to guide him into realizing that he didn't need to beat himself up over the decisions he'd made in the past while under a considerable amount of stress on the heels of the SAO Incident.

When James finally did respond it was not quite in the way that Gil had predicted he would.

The young wizard let out the breath he'd been holding in an explosive sigh before he latched onto Gil for all he was worth and murmured a contrite, "_I'm sorry. If I'd told you about the Dursleys the first time you asked, then you would have known where to find me or at least known where to start looking for me. I was just… too ashamed of the Dursleys and didn't ever want anyone to know about them. And I didn't want you or the others to actually meet the Dursleys because if you met them, then they would tell you all sorts of terrible things about me._"

Gil sighed in exasperation even as he returned James's hug. After a moment he dryly stated, "_You are one stubborn gaki, you know that, ne?_"

"_So you've told me once or twice._"

Gil chuckled in response to the cheeky, if hesitant, reply before he grew serious again as he pulled back so he could see James's face as he asked, "_Why do you insist on shouldering the blame for everything?_"

"_I don't blame myself for everything,_" James countered as he frowned at Gil. "_It was only every the Dursleys who blamed me for everything even when I didn't do anything. I only blame myself for the stupid things that I know were my fault._"

Gil let out a hum of dissatisfaction over the fact that his attempt to convince James to let go of the guilt he felt backfired on him. Instead of trying to force the issue at the moment and potentially upsetting his son further, Gil let the matter drop for now as he attempted to bring the conversation back to the original topic.

"_Aside from Kikuoka-san learning about the existence of the Dursley and his attempts to make you feel guilty about the deaths of those players you'd worked with during the first six weeks of the game; was there anything else he brought up that is still bothering you?_"

James scowled fiercely in response to the question before he snapped out a terse, "_I'm not doing it!_"

"_Not doing what?_"

"_I refuse to log onto another server!_"

"_Not even for a chance to visit Aincrad?_" Gil quietly inquired as he watched a dozen different emotions swirl through the depths of James's eyes.

"_There is no Aincrad to return to; it collapsed around me after Kirito beat Kayaba four years ago,_" James flatly countered as he blanked all emotions from his face.

"_Aa, the Aincrad that we were trapped inside of for two years was destroyed when the game was won,_" Gil agreed as he tried to ignore the way his heart ached at seeing that particular look on James's face. "_That version of the game was hardly the only version of Aincrad that existed though; the beta version of Aincrad had not been lost and there was a backup copy of Aincrad taken just prior to the official launch of the game. So, it __**is**__ possible to visit Aincrad or a hundred other worlds that were based off of Aincrad._"

A small spark of interest filled James's eyes for all of two seconds before it was smothered beneath a blanket of fear as James warily uttered, "_You're talking about those seed worlds that Kikuoka-san mentioned._"

"_Aa._"

"_I won't go._"

"_Will you at least tell me why you don't want to see Aincrad again?_" Gil asked in an effort to find out what it was about going back on-line that frightened his son; aside from the obvious, that is. They had spent two years trapped on a server, after all.

"_I don't want to loose you again, tousan,_" James confessed as he burrowed his face against Gil's stomach. "_It was hard enough the first time I lost you and I can't do that again. I just can't._"

"_I'm not going anywhere, musuko,_" Gil promised and he reflexively tightened his arms around the teen when James snaked his arms around Gil's waist in response to his promise.

Gil would stay with James until the teen fell asleep some thirty-three minutes later. He then eased the pint-sized wizard back down onto the bed. James's familiar would climb up onto the bed just as soon as he stopped fussing with the covers and Gil felt a ghost of a smile tug at his lips as he watched the occamy protectively curl up next to the teen. He would then spend another ten minutes just watching James sleep before he turned off the light and slipped out of the room; his thoughts swirling with everything he'd learned about his adopted son that evening.

* * *

**Translations:** Japanese to English

Aa – yes  
Ano – um/uh/er  
Gaki – brat  
Hai – yes  
Hajimari no Machi – Starting City or Town of Beginnings  
Musuko – son

**Game Terminology:**

Aincrad – **A**n **Inc**arnating **Rad**ius (the name of the Castle that is SAO)  
NPC – **N**on-**P**layer **C**haracter

**Notes:**

* Kibaou – is a canon character, a member of the Aincrad Liberation Force (ALF) Guild which was often referred to as The Army by the players, and one of the SAO survivors. He made a cameo appearance in this story back in 'Chapter 3: Experience'; he was the ALF Member that attempted to stop James/Harry from leaving Hajimari no Machi at the start of the game. He was also one of the more vocal players that spoke out against the Beta Testers in Canon &amp; one of the fighters that faced both the Illfang the Kobold Lord (1st Flr Boss), an unnamed two headed giant (25th Flr Boss), and the Gleam Eyes (74th Flr Boss).

Harry's Behavior – For those who are upset by Harry's brief breakdown in both this chapter and the last chapter, please keep in mind that he is still struggling to cope with everything that has happened over the past six years and that he is only fifteen years old. And while he has talked with Gil, Sirius, and the others about everything that has happened, he hasn't really dealt with anything yet. He's been suppressing a LOT of negative emotions because he's still riding the high of being reunited w/ Gil and the others.

Kikuoka's mini-interrogation then forced the cap off the bottle that those emotions were stored in and the result was that Harry got tripped up with everything. It is going to take **time** and a few visits to a psychologist/psychiatrist for him to work through everything; so you can expect him to have issues every now and then in the mean time. And before you tell me that Harry's old enough to handle everything just fine, I've known grown men and women that were unable to handle even half of what I've put Harry through in this story; and this story is tame when compared to some of my other stories.

That said, Harry will not remain quite so emotionally charged forever. Nor will he sink into a constant pool of angst for the rest of the story.

* * *

**AN:** _I finally managed to get this chapter finished earlier this week! You have no idea how long I'd been butting heads w/ Gil in order to get this chapter written. The guy just did not want to cooperate with me. James was being a little pain too but I can forgive him for being an angsty little brat in this chapter. Anywho, now that this chapter is complete, there's only 3 more chapters left in the summer arc. All three of those chapters are outlined; I just have to finish writing them out. Not sure when I'll be able to get to them though as I expect I'll be without my computer for all of next week since I don't want to leave the PC running for another 24/7 after having done that this week to get as much done as I did. _

_The good news though, is that I believe that I managed to solve my monitor issue with the help of one of my readers and will hopefully have a replacement monitor here in a short while. I'll most likely make an announcement on my author's page once I know for certain what day I'll have the replacement monitor on hand.  
_

_Next, for those of you who are not following my story 'The Unbound Soul', I recently opened a account due to our extremely tight budget being threatened with implosion due to our landlord feeling the need to raise our rent. So, now we're facing a choice; pay our new increased rent or keep our phone &amp; internet service. I don't think I need to explain what would happen if we took either choice since the end result for both would basically equate to no more story updates from me for who knows how long.  
_

_So, I am swallowing my pride and asking for your support. You need not worry that I will suddenly hold chapters hostage for tips though as I am not offering up my writing or my stories as my creations. I chose, instead, to use my photography since I refuse to force myself to write on demand. I will, however, offer up scene cuts, omakes, incomplete projects, and original drabbles/shorts as rewards in addition to other photography and graphic related rewards. If you are interested in helping a starving author continue sharing, you can find me on by searching for Jennifer Rasch._

_For those who do follow 'The Unbound Soul' and read my initial announcement regarding and were interested in becoming a patron but found yourselves unable to search my profile at the time I first posted my note, the search block on my creator's page was removed around 24 hrs after I updated 'The Unbound Soul'. _

_And last, but by no means least, I'd like to give a huge thanks those individuals that made pledges to my creator's account on ; your faith and support are very much appreciated and I hope you've enjoyed the rewards that I've posted for you to date. I'd also like to thank the rest of you for your patience and for taking the time to read/review my stories! ~ Jenn_


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